i86 
TRAVELS IN 
from either one or the other of thefe places being in the hands 
of an ambitious enemy. 
In the firft place, it may be confidered as a general principle 
that has long been rooted in the French Government, and from 
which it will never depart, to aim at the overthrow of our 
power in India, and to endeavour to erecSt upon its ruins an em- 
pire of their own. To accomplifli this point, and in confe- 
quence thereof, in the language of the prefent Corfican ruler, 
** To ftrike a blow at England which will be followed up with 
" its complete deftrudion," they know there are but two roads 
to take : the one by getting polTeflion of Egypt and Syria, where 
they might colledt and feafon their troops for the grand expedi- 
tion, either by fea or land ; the other by occupying the Cape of 
Good Hope. The former they tried in the hope of fuccefs, be- 
caufe they knew the other to be a defperate attempt. Had they, 
or their forced ally, the Dutch, kept poiTefFion of the Cape, 
there is no reafon for fuppofmg that the fame fleet which failed 
for Egypt, might not have failed, from fome other port, to this 
ftation ; or that they could not have flipped out from time to 
time almoft any number of troops they might have thought 
proper to fend. Thefe troops, when feafoned and prepared at 
the Cape, for a warmer climate, could eafily have been tranf- 
ported to the Ifles of France and Bourbon, where the French 
would not only continue to draw fupplies from the former, and 
to vidua] and provifion their fhips of war and tranfports from 
thence, as in the American war, but where they could not fail 
to have received a material reinforcement to their fhipping from 
the 
