SOUTHERN AFRICA. 3»7 
from it is equally good, if not superior, to tlie Constatitia, 
though sold at one-sixth part of the price ; of such import- 
ance is a name. 
This wine sells at the Cape for 70 or 80 rixdollars the half 
aim, a cask which ought to contain 20 gallons ; but the 
avaricious propensity of the proprietors, increasing with the 
demands for their wine, has led them to fabricate false casks, 
few of them that come to England being found to measure 
more than seventeen or eighteen gallons ; many not above 
sixteen. And if they find out that the wine applied for is 
to be sent abroad, they are sure to adulterate it with some 
other thin wine. For, according to their own returns, the 
quantity exported and consumed in Cape Town, as in the 
case of Madeira wine, greatly exceeds the quantity manu- 
factured. 
By a settlement made between the Dutch Commissaries 
General, in the year 1793, and the owners of the two farms 
of Great and Little Constantia, the latter were bound to fur- 
nish, for the use of Government, 30 aums each, every year, 
at the rate of 50 rixdollars the aum ; which was regularly 
taken, after being tasted and sealed up in presence of persons 
appointed for that purpose, by the English Government, to 
the no little annoyance of the Great Lord of Constantia, who 
is the son and successor to the man of whom Mr. Le Vaillant 
has drawn a very entertaining portrait. The wine was paid 
for out of the Colonial Treasury, and the whole of it, under 
