The ‘Traveller Underground’[48] tells us a remarkable story of a blind man who once worked in Botallack, and continued his perilous toils underground for a long period, from the dread of being compelled to accept parish relief. By the fruits of his labour he supported a family of nine children, and such was his marvellous recollection of every turning and winding of the mine that he became a guide to his fellow- labourers if by any accident their lights were extinguished. On being discharged from this employment (and they must truly have had rocky hearts who did discharge him), this poor blind man soon afterwards met his death in a melancholy manner. Being engaged as attendant on some brick-layers, who were building a house at St. Ives, he had to carry the hods of mortar up to the scaffolding. Stepping too far back from a platform, he fell, and died almost immediately. Footnote 48: ‘Cornwall, its Mines and Miners.’ London, 1860. The chief copper ores of Cornwall are the bisulphuret (containing nearly equal parts of copper, sulphur, and iron), the sulphuret, or grey ore of the miners (containing more than 79 per cent. of copper), and the black ore, an almost pure oxide; but when extracted from the mine, these ores are generally so mixed up with impurities that their average contents do not amount to more than 2½ or 3½ per cent. They have consequently to undergo various processes of picking, crushing, sorting, and washing, before they are rendered saleable and fit for export to the smelting works of Swansea, the grand emporium for copper. The reason why they are not smelted on the spot is that the fuel needed is more bulky than the ore, and it is cheaper to bring the copper of Cornwall to the coal of South Wales than to take the coal to the copper. In Swansea—but half a century ago a mere hamlet, and now a flourishing town of 36,000 inhabitants—we find all the conditions needed for the development of a vast industry. Coal and water-power in inexhaustible abundance, excellent roads and railroads, the nearness of the sea, canals which allow vessels of considerable burden to load and unload close to the smelting huts, so that their high masts rise alongside of the towering chimneys—these are the natural and artificial advantages to which Swansea owes its rank as the first copper manufacturing town in the world. For, not satisfied with the abundant ores of Great Britain, its smelting works seek their materials in almost every copper-producing country of the globe. The rich ores of Chili and Australia, of Cuba and North America, of Norway and Tuscany, all find their way to Swansea, which re- exports the metal to every part of the world.