original passage: Before the coming of major industry, Abertillery was little more than an area of scattered farms in the ancient parish of Aberystruth. In 1779 the parish minister Edmund Jones described the area thus: "The valley of Tyleri... is the most delightful. The trees... especially the beech trees, abounding about rivers great and small, the hedges and lanes make these places exceeding pleasant and the passing by them delightful and affecting... in these warm valleys, with the prospect of the grand high mountains about them would make very delightful habitations." In 1799 clergyman and historian Archdeacon William Coxe toured the area and in writing a diary of his travels described it as "... richly wooded, and highly cultivated...we looked down with delight upon numerous valleys... with romantic scenery". The entire population of Aberystruth parish at the turn of the 19th century was just a little over 800. It is not known what the population of Abertillery was at the time but it was probably in the very low hundreds, all of whom would have spoken Welsh only.
original sentence: It is not known what the population of Abertillery was at the time but it was probably in the very low hundreds, all of whom would have spoken Welsh only.
sentence2: Are the best modern-day estimates of Abertillery's eighteenth-century population figures likely to have come about from contemporaneous conversations between English officials and bilingual town officials and/or educated residents?
sentence1: Before the coming of major industry, Abertillery was little more than an area of scattered farms in the ancient parish of Aberystruth. In 1779 the parish minister Edmund Jones described the area thus: "The valley of Tyleri... is the most delightful. The trees... especially the beech trees, abounding about rivers great and small, the hedges and lanes make these places exceeding pleasant and the passing by them delightful and affecting... in these warm valleys, with the prospect of the grand high mountains about them would make very delightful habitations." In 1799 clergyman and historian Archdeacon William Coxe toured the area and in writing a diary of his travels described it as "... richly wooded, and highly cultivated...we looked down with delight upon numerous valleys... with romantic scenery". The entire population of Aberystruth parish at the turn of the 19th century was just a little over 800. The population of Abertillery at the time is unknown, but historians conclude that it must have been in the low triple digits, and was entirely composed of Welsh monolinguals.