BY SEVERN, TAFF, AND TOWY 147 



were entombed for a week or more, and were rescued 

 only by the gallant efforts of a party of volunteers 

 inspired and led on by the mining inspector, Mr. 

 Wales. 



The rescuing party burrowed into a great wall of 

 coal which shut off the sealed-up gallery from the 

 open one, and then, breaking a small driftway 

 through the last length, passed in restoratives to the 

 imprisoned men, and eventually got them out alive. 

 I visited one of the rescued in his house, and looked 

 on a man, pale and worn, it is true, but who had 

 been face to face with death for eight or ten days and 

 had never lost heart. 



Even if railways proper had been long delayed, it 

 is conceivable that tram-roads on the highways would 

 still have rendered cheap postage possible and 

 profitable ; inasmuch as a paragraph, which seemed 

 to forecast a feasible plan, appeared in the Cardiff and 

 Merthyr Guardian of January 14, 1839, to this effect : 



' A plan is said to be in agitation to establish tram-roads by 

 the side of turnpike -roads capable of competmg with railways for 

 all ordinary piu-poses, and at infinitely smaller expense as well 

 as risk. This plan is said to be at this time in operation at 

 Llanelly. The cost, it is said, would be ^1,350 per mile. Thus 

 tram-roads might have been made to Birmingham for ^6146, 000, 

 while the railroad has cost ^£6, 000, 000.' 



Such a tramway w^as subsequently laid between 

 Swansea and the Mumbles, and a passenger car 

 (which I occasionally travelled by) drawn by a horse, 

 and at one time propelled, to the best of my belief, by 



