SOUTHERN AFRICA. 307 
part of the world, by encouraging trade and honest industrj^ 
suffers them to remain frequently without any supply of 
European produce and manufacture. It is no uncommon 
thing, I understand, to see the inhabitants of Spanish America 
with silver buckles, clasps, and buttons, silver stirrups and 
bits to their bridles, whilst the whole of their clothing is 
not worth a single shilling. The whalers, who intend to 
make the coasts of Lima and Peru, are well acquainted with 
this circumstance, and generally carry out with them a quan- 
tity of ready made second-hand clothing, which they dispose 
of at a high rate in exchange for Spanish dollars. All this 
branch of trade might, with great advantage to both parties, 
be carried on from the Cape of Good Hope. 
The emporium, therefore, being supplied by the East 
India Company with European goods, as well as with India 
and China commodities, the first to be sold at a very small 
advance on the London market price, and the latter exempt, 
or nearly so, from all duties, might be the means of putting 
a stop to the clandestine traders upon British capitals, but 
navigating under neutral colors, which has long been a sub- 
ject of unavailing complaint. The Directors of the East 
India Company would, no doubt, be able to decide as to the 
rate at which it would be worth the while of these adventurers 
to make their purchases at the Cape, rather than continue 
their voyage to India or China. 
Such an entrepot might likewise be the means of opening a 
lucrative branch of trade with the West Indies ; a trade that 
would not only put a stop to that which, of late years, the 
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