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.
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