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Swansea, like all the cities in the Welsh coal and metal region, has grown greatly during the present century. Walter Savage Landor lived here for a while, just when the copper-works were beginning to appear in the valley of the Tawe. Their smoke defiled the landscape, and he exclaimed, "Would to God there was no trade upon earth!"
Up the valley of the Tawe the town spreads several miles, and here are the enormous copper-works and smelting-furnaces which make a reproduction of the infernal regions, defile the air, but fill the purses of the townsfolk. Swansea is the greatest copper-smelting dépôt in the world, drawing its ores from all parts of the globe.
Its former great dock was the North Dock, constructed in the old bed of the Tawe, a newer and more direct channel being made for the river. It has two recently-constructed and larger docks.
From the same mountains of Brecheinoc the river Tawe flows down to Abertawe, called in English Swainsey. The Lochor joins the sea near the castle of the same name; and the Wendraeth has its confluence near Cydweli.
There had been copper-works on the Neath three centuries ago, but the first upon the Tawe were established in 1745. From them have grown the fame and wealth of the Cornish family of the Vivians, who have been copper-smelters for three generations at Swansea, and in front of the town-hall stands the statue of the "Copper King," the late John Henry Vivian, who represented Swansea in Parliament.
Within this magnificent bay, with its wooded and villa-lined shores, there is a spot that discloses the bare brown hills guarding the entrance to the valley of the river Tawe, up which the houses of Swansea climb, with a dense cloud of smoke overhanging them that is evolved from the smelting-furnaces and collieries behind the town.
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