Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/332

 exceed about two hundredweight. These, when landed, were conveyed on mules and pack-horses through Servia and Hungary to Vienna, for the purpose of being distributed over Germany, and sometimes even into France. The articles sold at enormously high prices. Sugar fetched 5s. to 6s. per lb.; coffee 7s. per lb.; indigo 18s.; and cotton 7s. and 8s. per lb.

On the 5th September, 1807, the English made themselves masters of the small island of Heligoland (which was confirmed to them by the Treaty of Kiel, January 14th, 1814), and thence enormous quantities of British goods were smuggled into Holstein, and thence again were conveyed at a charge of 33 to 40 per cent. within the French custom-house line. This regular traffic, being well known to the imperial authorities, and sometimes connived at on account of its enormous profits, was