190 TRAVELS IN 
still sufficiently cheap to enable the soldier to purchase fully 
as much as was useful to him. Numbers of the soldiers, in- 
deed, contrived to save money out of their pay. The 91st 
regiment of Highlanders, in particular, was known to have 
remitted a good deal of money to their families in Scotland ; 
and many of the Serjeants of the different regiments, at the 
evacuation of the colony, had saved from one to two hundred 
pounds in hard money. 
In the year 1800 the government, in order to bring a little 
more money into the treasury by the wine licence, directed, 
by proclamation, that the retail sellers should demand from 
the soldier the increased price of eightpence the bottle, in- 
stead of sixpence, which, however, they had prudence enough 
to decline. The sum brought into the government treasury 
by tolerating this monopoly, averaged about seventy thou- 
sand rixdollars annually. But in the event of the Cape fall- 
ing again into our hands, which sooner or later must happen, 
if it be an object to secure our Indian possessions, it would 
be wise to supply this part of the revenue by some other 
means. 
Government likewise derived other profits besides those 
which accrued from the cheapness of the rations. The De- 
puty-Paymaster-General drew bills on his Majesty's Pay- 
masters-General in England, in exchange for the paper cur- 
rency of the colony, in which all the contingent and extra- 
ordinary expences of the garrison were paid. There was not, 
in fact, any other circulating medium than this colonial cur- 
rency which was sanctioned by the English at the capitula- 
