Good Hope, however, offered excellent facilities for rest and refreshment; so here the outward and homeward-bound ships of the Company met. The captains, officers, and crews all knew one another, and were bound together by common interests. Also the passengers; the various officials of the Company, traveling to and from India with their families; the officers of the military forces of the Company and their families; besides the soldiers under their command. These people all met at the Cape, and the latest news from England was exchanged for the gossip of the Company's settlements in Canton, Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. Old and new friends met at dinners, dances, lunches, and receptions. And when a number of ships happened to be in at the Cape, it was more like a Cowes-Regatta week than a gathering of merchantmen. After a week or two spent in this way, letters were written to friends at home or to those left behind in China or India, the topsails sheeted home, yards mastheaded, anchor hove up, farewells given to the outward-and homeward-bound, and amid the smoke of parting salutes, the Indiamen of the eighteenth century started on their way, eastward across the Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal, or China Seas.
Upon the arrival of the Company's ships in China or India, the sails were unbent and sent on shore, masts and yards sent down, and decks housed over with a roof of matting. Here the ships would lie for months discharging and receiving their cargoes, when, at last, amid great
