SOUTHERN AFRICA. - 245 
To the English the intervention of a port, in the longest 
voyages, is the least important; and many commanders, of 
late years, have been so little solicitous on this point, as to 
prefer making the run at once, rather than sufl'er the delay 
and impediment occasioned by calling for refreshments on 
the passage. The commanders, indeed, of the British ships, 
in general, are so well acquainted with the nature of the 
fixed and periodical winds (the Trades and Monsoons), and 
with making the most of those that arc variable, that distant 
voyages are now reduced almost to a certain duration. The 
old system, still, perhaps, too rigidly adhered to in the navj-, 
of endeavouring to place the ship's head in the direction of 
her intended port, is entirely exploded by the commanders 
of ships in the employ of the East India Company. It may 
answer the purpose in the British Channel, and near land, 
but is ill suited for a long voyage, through climates where the 
wind undergoes but little change. The squadron of men of 
war, which brought away the garrison, on the evacuation of 
the Cape, were twelve weeks on their passage, whilst the Sir 
Edward Hughes Indiaman, which left the Cape a week later, 
was three weeks in England sooner, than the said squadron. 
A passage from China, which formerly was reckoned from ten 
to twelve months, is now reduced to four montlis, and has 
been made in a hundred days. 
This rapidity in skimming over the ocean, reduced, as 
nearly as the nature of such a loco-motion will allow, to a 
certainty, added to the superior quality, as well as abundance, 
of provisions that are laid in for the voyage, has rendered it 
a matter of perfect indifference to English seamen, in point of 
