In this
new-found El Dorada, Hillary had, it seems, been a labourer, and, if he
told truth, to some purpose, though he was far from having completed the
harvest which he meditated. He spoke, indeed, of making investments,
and, as a mere matter of fancy, he consulted his old master, Clerk
Lawford, concerning the purchase of a moorland farm of three thousand
acres, for which he would be content to give three or four thousand
guineas, providing the game was plenty, and the trouting in the brook
such as had been represented by advertisement. But he did not wish to
make any extensive landed purchase at present. It was necessary to keep
up his interest in Leadenhall Street; and in that view, it would be
impolitic to part with his India stock and India bonds. In short, it was
folly to think of settling on a poor thousand or twelve hundred a year,
when one was in the prime of life, and had no liver complaint; and so he
was determined to double the Cape once again, ere he retired to the
chimney corner for life. All he wished was, to pick up a few clever
fellows for his regiment, or rather for his own company; and as in all
his travels he had never seen finer fellows than about Middlemas, he was
willing to give them the preference in completing his levy. In fact, it
was making men of them at once, for a few white faces never failed to
strike terror into these black rascals; and then, not to mention the
good things that were going at the storming of a Pettah, or the
plundering of a Pagoda, most of these tawny dogs carried so much
treasure about their persons, that a won battle was equal to a mine of
gold to the victors.
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