Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/295

 1852.] IMMORALITY, AND ITS CAUSES. 263

them, to go among the wild Indian tribes and buy up their produce. They, however, have to give credit to the Indians, who will not work till they have been paid six months beforehand ; and so they are paid for sarsaparilla or oil, which is still in the forest or the lake. And at every step of this credit there is not the slightest security ; and robbery, waste, and a profuse squandering away of the property of others, is of constant occurrence. To cover all these chances of loss, the profits are proportionably great at every step, and the consumer often has to pay two shillings a yard for calico worth twopence, and everything else in like proportion. It is these apparently enormous profits that lead mechanics and others into trade, as they; do not consider the very small business that can be done in a given time, owing to the poverty of the country and the enormous number of traders in proportion to the purchasers. It seems a very nice and easy way of getting a living, to sell goods at double the price you pay for them, and then again to sell the produce you receive at double what you pay for it ; but as the greater part of the small traders do not get rid of more than a hundred pounds' worth of goods in a year, and the expenses of Indians and canoes, their families and bad debts, wines and liquors, and the waste which always takes place where everything is obtained upon credit, are often double that sum, it is not to be wondered at that they are almost all of them constantly in debt to their correspondents, who, when they have once thus got a hold on them, do not allow them easily to get free.

It is this universal love of trade which leads, I think, to three great vices very prevalent here — drinking, gambling, and lying, — besides a whole host of trickeries, cheatings, and debaucheries of every description. The life of a river trader admits of little enjoyment to a man who has no intellectual resources ; it is not therefore to be wondered at that the greater part of these men are more or less addicted to intoxi- cation ; and when # they can supply themselves on credit with as much wine and spirits as they like, there is little inducement to break through the habit. A man who, if he had to pay ready money, would never think of drinking wine, when he can have it on credit takes twenty or thirty gallons with him in his canoe, which, as it has cost him nothing, is little valued, and he perhaps arrives at the end of his voyage without a drop.