Page:The Present State of Peru.djvu/25

Rh and commodities, he himself received the law from the monopolizing wholesale dealer. The negotiations of the capital with the interior were then, in a great measure, dependent on the intelligence and the decisions of the magistrates; and the commerce with Spain owed its best security to the circulation of the silver entered in the bills of lading. Commerce, on the other hand, being at this time subdivided into so many smaller branches, maintains a greater number of merchants; at the same time that the fortunes which accrue from it are not so numerous. It is necessary that a commercial man should combine his plans skilfully, and extend his speculations, to be enabled to acquire a handsome property.

The manufactures of this country consist almost entirely of a few friezes, the use of which is in a manner confined to the Indians and negroes. There are besides an inconsiderable number of manufactures of hats, cotton cloths, drinking glasses, &c. which do not, however, occupy much space in the scale of the riches of Peru. Sugar, Vicuna wool, cotton, Peruvian bark, copper, and cocoa (it is to be observed, however, that the two latter articles, as well as a considerable part of the Peruvian bark, are sent hither from Guayaquil, &c.), are the only commodities, the produce of our mines excepted, which we export.

The mines are the principal, it may indeed be said, the only source of the riches of Peru. Notwithstanding the little industry which is employed in working them, and the small help which commerce affords to the miners, 534,000 marks of silver, and 6,380 of gold, were smelted and refined last year (1790)