Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/470

358 though they never were richer in all probability than at present. No nation can now turn them to any profit, but the English East India Company, more intent on multiplying the number of their enemies, and weakening themselves by spreading their inconsiderable force over new conquests, than creating additional profit by engaging in new articles of commerce. A settlement upon the river Frat, which never yet has belonged to any one but wandering Arabs, would open them a market both for coarse and fine goods from the southern frontiers of Morocco, to Congo and Angola, and set the commerce of pearls and tortoise shell on foot again. All this section of the Gulf from Suez, as I am told, is in their charter, and twenty ships might be employed on the Red Sea, without any violation of territorial claims. The myrrh, the frankincense, some cinnamon, and variety of drugs, are all in the possession of the weak king of Adel, an usurper, tyrant, and Pagan, without protection, and willing to trade with any superior power, that only would secure him a miserable livelihood.

this does not take place, I am persuaded the time is not far off, when these countries shall, in some shape or other, be subjects of a new master. Were another Peter, another Elizabeth, or, better than either, another Catharine to succeed the present, in an empire already extended to China; — were such a sovereign, unfettered by European politics, to prosecute that easy task of pushing those mountebanks of sovereigns and statesmen, these stage-players of government, the Turks, into Asia, the inhabitants of the whole country, who in their hearts look upon her already as their sovereign, because she is the head of their religion, would, I am persuaded, submit without a blow that in-