SOUTHERN AFRICA, i8i 
the adjacent islands, it commands a ready eomniuriication at 
all seasons of the year. A place so situated, just half wav 
between England and India, in a temperate and wholesome 
climate, and productive of refreshments of every description, 
would naturally be supposed to hold out such irresistible ad- 
vantages to the East India Company, not only by its happy 
position and local ascendancy, but also by the means it af- 
fords of opening a new market and intermediate depository 
for their trade and commodities, that they would have been 
glad to purchase, at any price, an acquisition of such im- 
mense importance; and that such great advantages as it 
possessed, however they might be blinked by some or un- 
known to others, would speedily have forced a general con- 
viction of their value, in spite of real ignorance or affected 
indiftbrence. 
One might also have supposed that the possession of the 
Cape of Good Hope would have suggested itself to the East 
India Company as a place which would have removed many, 
if not all, of the difficulties that occurred to them, on the 
renewal of their privileges in 1793, when a dep6t for their 
recruits in Britain was in contemplation. The principal re- 
gulations proposed for such depository of troops, as contained 
in " Historic View of Flans for British India" were the fol- 
lowing : — " That the age of the Company's recruits should 
" be from twelve to fifteen or twenty, because, at this period 
" of life, the constitution was found to accommodate itself 
" most easily to the different variations of climate — that the 
" officers of the police should be empowered to transfer to 
" the depot all such helpless and indigent youths as might 
