But the travelers from London have not followed the Earl of Lostwithiel and Thomas Newcomen all this way to look at cows or boats. As they come out from under the dripping eaves of the last little oak-coppice, Daniel Waterhouse, Norman Orney, and Peter Hoxton begin to note certain oddments and novelties round the foot of the valley. Above the high tide mark, the ground runs gently up-hill for no more than a bow-shot before leaping up to make a rocky bluff that looms over the estuary. It’s obvious enough, even to visitors who are not aficionadoes of the Technologickal Arts, that men have been digging coal out of the roots of that bluff for many generations. The flat ground along the shore is strewn with dunnage and gouged with marks where they have trundled and dragged the coal down to meet the boats. To that point, it is typical of a certain type of small mine that might prosper until the miners delved to the waterline, and then be abandoned.