Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/119

Rh through which not a single river directs its course." Thus spoke, very much to the purpose, one of the early historians of Peru.

Time, the supreme arbiter of speculations and possibilities, has established the solidity of this observation, Peru not having been susceptible, in the lapse of nearly three centuries, of any augmentation in the amount of her productions. They are, however, proportioned to the number of her inhabitants, the sole consumers, between whom a constant intercourse is maintained, the provinces supplying each other reciprocally with the particular articles of consumption, which are superabundant in some, and defective in others. This commerce, which is carried on both by sea and land, left a balance, at the close of the year 1789, in favour of the viceroyalty of Lima, of seven hundred and twenty-five thousand one hundred and ninety-two piastres:—an estimate which will serve, with a trifling variation, for the other years.

The profits which that viceroyalty derived, in the course of the above year, from the introduction of its productions into the provinces of Buenos-Ayres, exceeded a million of piastres. It cannot be said to carry on any maritime trade with these provinces, although the circumstances of the war of 1779 occasioned two or three vessels to be sent from Callao to Montevideo, partly laden with cacao and cinchona, destined to be shipped on board vessels bound to Cadiz; and partly with sugar, honey, and cloths of the fabric of the country, for the consumption of the interior. It is indeed true, that in the bark which sails occasionally from the port of Montevideo to that of Arica, to supply the mines situated in that government with quicksilver, it has been customary to ship tallow, and the herb