328 TRAVELS IN 
•shipping, as well as of inhabitants, raised the price of the 
former from two shilUngs to two shillings and sixpence the 
thousand, and of the latter from fourpence to sixpence a 
pound. 
Walnut-s and chesnuts are neither plentiful nor good ; and 
the latter will barely keep a month without decaying, so that 
these are never likely to become articles of general consump- 
tion or of exportation. 
But dried peaches, apricots, pears, and apples, are not only 
plentiful, but good of their kind. The peaches and pears 
are used in the desert, but apricots and apples are intended 
for tarts ; the latter, indeed, are nearly as good as when fresh 
from the tree. All the others are squeezed together and 
dried whole, but the apples are sliced thin and dried in the 
sun, till they take the consistence and appearance of slips of 
leather, of that kind and color usually called the York tan. 
These, when soaked in water, swell out and make very ex- 
cellent tarts ; and are sold chiefly as an article of sea stock. 
The whole value of dried fruit, shipped in the year 1802, 
amounted only to 2542 rixdollars, as appears by the Custom- 
house books, on which every pound is entered, being subject 
to a duty on exportation of 5 per cent. 
SALT PROVISIONS. 
This is an artick, as I have already taken occasion to ob- 
serve, that is susceptible of great improvement ; not, how- 
ever, to be prepared in Cape Town, after the cattle have 
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