Page:Voyage in search of La Perouse, volume 1 (Stockdale).djvu/428

400 About the middle, the depth is too great for anchoring.

The fort, which is called Victory Fort, is built with bricks, and the Governor and some of the members of the council reside in it. It was then falling into ruin, and from every gun which was fired, it sustained some damage.

The garrison was composed of about two hundred men; the greater part of them natives of the island; the rest were European soldiers in the Company's service, and a weak detachment of the regiment of Wirtemberg.

Most of the European soldiers were tormented with the desire of revisiting their native country; but none of them had yet seen the happy moment of return. Some who had been amused with this vain hope, for many years, were a source of dejection to the rest.

The small number of soldiers who survive any long residence in India, renders those who have passed some years there, still more valuable; and hence the Dutch East India Company seldom fulfil their promise to allow the men, whose time is expired, to return to Europe. Every method is tried, in order to induce them to make a fresh engagement; and they who carefully avoid every stipulation, which can tend to prolong their confinement in the island, do not the sooner ob- tain