As My Business Is Not To Lay Out The Geographical Situation Of
Places, I Say Nothing Of The Buttings And
Boundings of this county.
It lies on the edge of the great level, called by the people here
the Fen
Country; and great part, if not all, the Isle of Ely lies
in this county and Norfolk. The rest of Cambridgeshire is almost
wholly a corn country, and of that corn five parts in six of all
they sow is barley, which is generally sold to Ware and Royston,
and other great malting towns in Hertfordshire, and is the fund
from whence that vast quantity of malt, called Hertfordshire malt,
is made, which is esteemed the best in England. As Essex, Suffolk,
and Norfolk are taken up in manufactures, and famed for industry,
this county has no manufacture at all; nor are the poor, except the
husbandmen, famed for anything so much as idleness and sloth, to
their scandal be it spoken. What the reason of it is I know not.
It is scarce possible to talk of anything in Cambridgeshire but
Cambridge itself; whether it be that the county has so little worth
speaking of in it, or, that the town has so much, that I leave to
others; however, as I am making modern observations, not writing
history, I shall look into the county, as well as into the
colleges, for what I have to say.
As I said, I first had a view of Cambridge from Gogmagog hills; I
am to add that there appears on the mountain that goes by this
name, an ancient camp or fortification, that lies on the top of the
hill, with a double, or rather treble, rampart and ditch, which
most of our writers say was neither Roman nor Saxon, but British.
I am to add that King James II.
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