2l8 
TRAVELS IN 
when be had assembled a sufficient force, and prepared the 
necessary quantity of shipping in the Red Sea, he might have 
availed himself of a favourable opportunity of making a 
descent on the Malabar coast. In such an event he was well 
aware that England, at that time, would never have relin- 
quished the Cape of Good Hope, which he might therefore 
have proposed as an equivalent for Egypt. The importance^ 
which the French have attached to this half-way station be- 
tween Europe and India, appears from the conferences which 
took place between Lord Malmesbury and Monsieur De let 
Croix, wherein the latter persisted that the Cape of Good 
Hope was of infinitely greater importance to England than 
the Netherlands were to France, and that if our demands for 
keeping it were acquiesced in, it should be considered as a 
full and ample compensation for them. " If," says he, " you 
" are masters of the Cape and Trincomalee, we shall hold all 
" our settlements in India, and the Isles of France and Bour- 
" bqn entirely at the tenure of your will and pleasure; they 
" will be ours only as long as you choose we should retain 
" them ; you will be sole masters in India, and we shall be 
" entirely dependent on you." On one occasion, he vehe- 
mently exclaimed, " Your Indian empire alone has enabled 
" you to subsidize all the powers of Europe against us, and 
" your monopoly of the Indian trade has put you in possession 
" of a fund'of inexhaustible wealth !" 
As the French, in all human probability, will very soon be 
deprived of all their colonies in the west, they will be the 
more anxious to increase their establishments in the east ; 
and however limited might have been the extent of their 
2 
