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308 African Memoranda. j J ’ • r CHAPTER VII. Recapitulation of the principal causes of our failure—none of which can be attributed either to the difficulty or impracticability of the Enterprise itself. To a person who lias perused the foregoing pages much need not be said upon this subject; for, after such a series of error, of folly, and of imbecility, success, rather than failure, must have produced astonishment. I shall however endeavour to collect into one point of view the principal causes of our miscarriage, and this with a view of Causes of fai-proving that our want of success was not owin'* to the impracti- lure origins- „ . ting in ^a-cabihty, or difficulty, oj the enterprise, but to the measures Tope ‘ pursued by its proposers and conductors. The season In the 1st place the season was too far advanced when our vance^whenproposals were first published; (the 9th of Nov. 1791) for if waTfi^sTde! 1101116 those unforeseen delays, which afterwards took place, termined up-happened, we should not have been able to have'taken possession of the island more than two months earlier than we actually did ; which would not have been many days prior to the commencement of the rainy season ; whereas the best time to have arrived at the island would have been about the middle of November, when we should have had certainly more than six months dry weather, in which to have erected habitations and cleared ground.