198 TRAVELS IN 
trusted to weak and corrupt governors, and numerous and 
unnecessary appointments are created, every station, what- 
ever the local advantages may be, will become expensive. 
But the expenditure necessary for the support of the gar- 
rison of the Cape, trifling even in war, could be no object 
whatsoever in time of peace. The fortifications, which were 
in the most ruinous condition when the place was taken, 
being finished in a complete manner, would require no fur- 
ther expence than that of merely keeping the works in repair, 
which might amount, perhaps, to an annual sum of five 
thousand pounds. The contingencies and extraordinaries of 
the army could not, at the utmost, amount to twenty thou- 
sand pounds ; so that twenty-five or thirty thousand pounds 
would be the extent of the contingent and extraordinary ex- 
pences of the Cape in time of peace ; a sum that, by proper 
management, and a prudent application of the revenues of 
the colony, might easily be defrayed out of the public trea- 
sury, and leave a surplus adequate to all the demands of the 
civil department, together with the necessary repairs of public 
works and buildings. 
It may be necessary that I should give the grounds upon 
which 1 calculate. From a review of the colonial revenues, 
I find that the average in the Dutch Government in ten 
years, from 1784 to 1794, was little more than 100,000 rix- 
dollars yearly, but that by the regulations and new imposts 
made by the Dutch Commissaries General in 1793, the 
amount iu the following year was 211,568 rixdollars. They 
