This Town Is Also Remarkable For A Very Great Trade In All
Manufactures Of Leather, Such As Boots, Shoes, Gloves, Purses,
Breaches, &C.; And Some Spinning Of Late Years Is Set Up Here,
Encouraged By The Woollen Manufacturers Of Devonshire.
Between these two towns of Saltash and Liskeard is St. Germans, now
a village, decayed, and without any market,
But the largest parish
in the whole county--in the bounds of which is contained, as they
report, seventeen villages, and the town of Saltash among them; for
Saltash has no parish church, it seems, of itself, but as a chapel-
of-ease to St. Germans. In the neighbourhood of these towns are
many pleasant seats of the Cornish gentry, who are indeed very
numerous, though their estates may not be so large as is usual in
England; yet neither are they despicable in that part; and in
particular this may be said of them--that as they generally live
cheap, and are more at home than in other counties, so they live
more like gentlemen, and keep more within bounds of their estates
than the English generally do, take them all together.
Add to this that they are the most sociable, generous, and to one
another the kindest, neighbours that are to be found; and as they
generally live, as we may say, together (for they are almost always
at one another's houses), so they generally intermarry among
themselves, the gentlemen seldom going out of the county for a
wife, or the ladies for a husband; from whence they say that
proverb upon them was raised, viz., "That all the Cornish gentlemen
are cousins."
On the hills north of Liskeard, and in the way between Liskeard and
Launceston, there are many tin-mines. And, as they told us, some
of the richest veins of that metal are found there that are in the
whole county--the metal, when cast at the blowing houses into
blocks, being, as above, carried to Liskeard to be coined.
From Liskeard, in our course west, we are necessarily carried to
the sea-coast, because of the River Fowey or Fowath, which empties
itself into the sea at a very large mouth. And hereby this river
rising in the middle of the breadth of the county and running
south, and the River Camel rising not far from it and running
north, with a like large channel, the land from Bodmin to the
western part of the county is almost made an island and in a manner
cut off from the eastern part--the peninsula, or neck of land
between, being not above twelve miles over.
On this south side we came to Foy or Fowey, an ancient town, and
formerly very large--nay, not large only, but powerful and potent;
for the Foyens, as they were then called, were able to fit out
large fleets, not only for merchants' ships, but even of men-of-
war; and with these not only fought with, but several times
vanquished and routed, the squadron of the Cinque Ports men, who in
those days were thought very powerful.
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