Swansea, is a large steam-engine, made by Bolton and Watt, which was
formerly the lion of the neighbourhood. This pumping engine draws the
water from all the collieries in the vale, throwing up one hundred
gallons of water at each stroke: it makes twelve strokes in a minute,
and consequently discharges 72,000 gallons an hour. This engine,
however, is very inferior in construction and finish to the pumping
engines of Cornwall, some of which are nearly three hundred
horsepower. At the consols mines, there are two engines, each with
cylinders of ninety inches in diameter, and everything about them kept
as clean as a drawing-room. What an extraordinary triumph of the
ingenuity of man, when it is considered that one of these gigantic
engines can be stopped in an instant, by the mere application of the
fingers and thumb of the engineer to a screw! The quantity of coals
consumed by the copper-works is enormous. We have heard that Messrs.
Vivians, who have the largest works on the river, alone consume 40,000
tons annually: this coal is all small, and not fit for exportation.
The copper trade may be considered as comparatively of modern date.
The first smelting works were erected at Swansea, about a century ago;
but now it is calculated that they support, including the collieries
and shipping dependant on them, 10,000 persons, and that 3,000 l. is
circulated weekly by their means in this district. Till within the
last few years, there were considerable copper smelting establishments
at Hayle, in Cornwall; but that county possessing no coals, they were
obliged to be abandoned, as it was found to be much cheaper to bring
the ore to the coal than the latter to the ore. Formerly, from the
want of machinery to drain the water from the workings (copper being
generally found at a much greater depth than tin), the miners were
compelled to relinquish the metallic vein before reaching the copper:
indeed, when it was first discovered, and even so late as 1735, they
were so ignorant of its value, that a Mr. Coster, a mineralogist in