Welsh Journals

Their profusion in certain places is likely to perplex the unwary geologist who may not know that the Devon folk unwittingly returned a token in kind for the thousands of tons of stone stripped from our hillsides and transported to their county. Horatio Tucker. VISITORS TO SWANSEA IN THE 19th CENTURY From 1770 an increasing number of travellers had come to Wales and returned to record their illuminating and varied impressions of what they had seen. With the turn of the century, and the Grand Tour an impossibility because of the wars which were troubling Europe, an even greater interest was displayed in exploring Wales And many of those who came, visited Swansea, travelling by all manner of means from many directions. From Briton Ferry across the Burrows, over the sands, under Kilvey hill and by ferry across the Tawe came Evans. Cooke and others followed the route from Neath through Llansamlet to Morriston and so down the valley to Swansea, while Barber came by sea not having enjoyed the journey. "At length," he says, "I trod on Cambrian ground and paid my half crown with a willing engagement to forfeit a hundred times that sum if ever I should again be caught on board a Swansea ferry boat." Borrow came down Swansea valley by foot and splashed from top to toe, for the roads were fright- fully miry, stopped at a small inn at Glandwr (Landore) to repair his appearance. O what can't a little money effect," he exclaimed when for sixpence in that small, nice inn, I had a glass of ale my boots cleaned, and the excrescences cut off, my clothes wiped with a dwile, and then passed over again with a brush, and was myself thanked over and over again." And then came the railway. Later tourists entered Swansea, once the line was extended from the former terminus at Landore to High Street, over one of the most remarkable viaducts in South Wales a triumph of engineering skill." So by sea and land, on foot and on horseback, by coach and by train, the tourists crowded into Swansea. They were much more methodical, inquisitive and painstaking than their eighteenth century predecessors had been, anxious to inform and educate as well as interest. Inevitably they tried to explain the origin of the name of the town about which there was considerable conjecture. Rees saw no sufficient reason to suppose it derived from the bay being at any time distinguished for the number of 'ts swans" and supported Camden's view that it commemorated the porpoises which abound in the Bristol Channel. Others thought that the name must refer to the smoothness of the waters of the bay while Evans hazarded that the town had formerly been called Swang-sea from Swang, an old word signifying a green sand or marsh sometimes overflowed by the sea." But the most attractive-and