24 
ST. HELENA. 
pounds to the annual expenditure, and at least £^00,000. is sunk, as 
a dead capital, in naval and military stores, warehouses, and public 
works. One expense of the East India Company does high credit 
to their humanity : they not only keep warehouses for all kind of 
articles that can be required by the ships that touch here, but also 
for every other thing which may be necessary for the natives, or 
tend to their comfort. On these they demand a profit of ten per 
cent, which by no means covers the expenses, independent of freight. 
The only revenue of the Company is derived from the rents of their 
lands, amounting at present to about eleven hundred a year, though 
probably, if out of lease, worth nearly thrice that sum ; and the 
profits of the monopoly of arrack, which nets on an average six 
thousand pounds. 
St. Helena was originally fortified by lines across James's Valley, 
and Rupert's Valley, the two largest in the island, and which were 
considered as the only places where a boat could land. When 
Captain Munden retook it from the Dutch in 1673, he erected a 
battery to command the small inlet, where he landed. Since that 
period, fortifications have been added in different places to leeward, 
and in Sandy Bay to windward, though a boat can hardly land there 
in the most moderate weather, on account of the heavy swell which 
the trade wind brings from the southern Atlantic. Most of the 
batteries are so elevated, that very few shots would probably hit 
a vessel under sail. Lately a new system has been adopted, by 
building a citadel on High Knowl ; and twenty thousand pounds 
have been laid out on a spot, where there is no water! As St. 
Helena is certainly a place of great utility, and as it would be an in- 
calculable evil if it should fall into the hands of an enemy, it ought 
