SOUTHERN AFRICA. 319 
But when we confider that the home market is neceflarily fe- 
cured to Britifh fubje£ls by high duties on foreign oil, we fliould 
alfo confider that every means to leflen the charges of outfit 
fhould ftrengthen our adventure in this lucrative branch of trade. 
Among others that would feem to have this tendency, are the 
facilities that might be afforded by the happy pofition of the 
Cape of Good Hope. If at this ftation was eftabliflied a kind 
of central depot for the Southern Whale Fifhery, it might, in 
time, be the means of throwing into our hands exclufively the 
fupplying of Europe with fpermaceti oil. To the protedion of 
the fifheries on the eaft and wefl: coafts of Southern Africa, the 
Cape is fully competent, and the fifheries on thefe coafts would 
be equally undifturbed in war as in peace. From hence they 
would, at all times, have an opportunity of acquiring a fupply 
of refrefhments for their crews, and of laying in a ftock of fait 
provifions at one-fourth part of tlie expence of carrying them 
out from England. 
In the wide range which, of late years, they have been ac- 
cuftomed to take, from the eaft, round Cape Horn, to the weft 
coaft of America, partly for the fake of carrying on a contra- 
band trade with the Spanifh colonies, and partly for fifhing, they 
are deftitute, in time of war, of all protedlion. Hitherto they 
have fuffered little inconvenience from this circumftance, be- 
caufe the Cape of Good Hope gave us the complete and un- 
difturbed pofleftion of the Southern Ocean ; but will this be the 
cafe in the prefent war, when the French and Dutch are in 
pofleftion of the bays and harbours of the Gape? Whilft, from 
Europe 
