the expedients and efforts of the energetic directors of the company
in the seventeenth century, and such faithful servants as van Riebeeck
and van der Stel, had failed to develop any mines or anv product for
export of any considerable importance. With
the
beginning of the eighteenth century there was an evident drooping in
the enterprise of the company, and a drift toward hopeless
discouragement, which culminated in 1794 with the declaration of bankruptcy. The company's debt was £10,000,000 sterling, and its credit was utterly exhausted. It could no longer undertake even to maintain a feeble garrison at the Castle for the defence
of its colony. Issues of depreciated and irredeemable paper had driven
out all gold and silver from circulation at the Cape. Debts could be
paid in this paper, which was legal tender, but nobody would receive it
in exchange for goods except at such a discount that there was a
general resort to
