Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1871.djvu/423

 TRADE AND COMMERCE. 387

bristles; wool; leather; fox, hare, and squirrel skins; canvas and coarse linen ; cordage, isinglass, furs, and tar. The principal British imports into Russia are cotton stuffs and yarn, of the value of 284,491/. in 1869; woollens, of the value of 429,868/.; and iron, wrought and unwrought, of the value of 2,811,151/. in 1869.

The quantities of wheat and other kinds of grain exported from Russia to the United Kingdom in each of the five years 1865 to 1869, from both the northern and southern ports of the empire, were as follows : —

Exports

I860 1866

1867

1868

1869

Northern Ports. Southern „

Total

Cwts. Cwts.

844,155 1,751,937

7,249,834 7,429,495

Cwts. 1,491,823

12,674.971

Cwts. Cwts. 4,683,813 4,134,808 8.371,525 9,173,124

8,093,989 9,181,432 114,166,794

13,055,338 13,317,932

I

In the year 1867, when the grain exports reached the highest amount, those shipped for the United Kingdom from the Southern ports alone were of the declared value of 9, U42, 909/., namely wheat, 8,767,761/.; barley, 138,368/.; maize,- 117,706/.; and other kinds of grain, 19,074/. The average value of the exports of grain from I the Northern ports of Russia to the. United Kingdom in the five years 1865 to 1869 amounted to about two millions sterling, of which 900,000/. was for wheat, and 1,100,000/. for oats.

In 1867 a total of 11.047 vessels, measuring 1,385,738 tons, ■entered Russian ports, 5,667 of the vessels, in ballast; 2,381 sailed n! under the British Hag, 1,241 under the Russian, 1,052 under the jj Italian, 1,134 Swedish and Norwegian. A total of 11,090 ves- sels, of 1,400,552 tons, cleared out. The customs receipts in 1867 .amounted to 37,000,000 roubles — a sum unprecedented in any former year.

The commercial navy of Russia consisted, at the end of the year


 * 1867, of 2,132 sea-going vessels, of an aggregate burthen of 90,496

Iship last, or 180,992 tons. The total comprised 607 ships engaged

in trading to foreign countries, and 1,525 coabting vessels, many of

them belonging to Greeks, sailing under the Russian nag. Not

1 included in the return were 396 trading steamers on the rivers and

lakes of the empire, very nearly two-thirds of the number on the

Briver Volga and its affluents. The inland trade has very largely

i [increased in recent years.

The internal commerce of the empire, as well as its foreign trade, ! has been great lv extended by the establishment, in recent years, of l!a comprehensive network of railways. During the latter part of

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