25b TRAVELS IN 
the Cape of Good Hope, ready on any emergency to act 
either to the eastward or the westward. 
It is not probable that France will ever be able to make 
any impression on India but by the assistance of a fleet ; 
and it must be our own fault if we allow them any such fleet 
in the Eastern Seas; as by our possessing the Cape, she must 
find it utterly impracticable to assemble, much more to victual 
and store, any such fleet. The want of a suitable place to re- 
fresh at must render every attempt to cope with us in those 
seas abortive. So well were they aware, in the late war, of 
the futility of any expedition from the Isles of France and 
Bourbon, without the assistance of the Cape of Good Hope, 
that they preferred the fatal experiment of colonizing Egypt, 
in the hope, perhaps, of proceeding at some future time by 
the Red Sea to India. They knew that, even if they had 
succeeded in getting out to these islands a sufficient number 
of ships and troops, yet without the supplies which they have 
usuall}'^ on such occasions drawn from the Cape, any such ex- 
pedition must necessarily here have ended. 
While England held the Cape, the trade of every other 
nation to India and China might be considered as entirely at 
her mercy, though this is an advantage of which she is under 
no necessity of availing herself. During the northern con- 
federacy, several Danes came in to refresh, although they 
knew they would be taken, or at least detained. With re- 
spect to the Americans, who, of late, by their carrying-trade 
alone, have worked themselves into the greatest portion, next 
to England, of the India and China trade, notwithstanding 
