62 OBJECTS OF MODEEN COMMERCE. 



remarkable for their successful cultivation, and that, too, in com- 

 paratively recent times, or, in other words, within two or three 

 centuries. 



Something of detail on this subject can not, I think, fail to 

 prove interesting. Pliny mentions about thirty or forty oils as 

 known to the ancients, of which only oKve, sesame, rape seed and 

 walnut oil — for except in one or two doubtful passages I find in 

 this author no notice of Knseed oil — appear to have been used in 

 such quantities as to have had any serious importance in the car- 

 rying trade. At the present time the new oils, hnseed oil, the 

 oil of the whale and other large marine animals,* petroleum (of 

 which the total consumption of the world in 18Y1 was estimated 

 at 6,000,000 barrels, and in 1880 is supposed to have reached 

 at least 8,000,000 barrels, the port of Philadelphia alone export- 

 ing more than 88,000,000 gallons in that year), palm oil, recently 

 introduced into commerce, and of which more than 50,000 tons 

 were imported into England from the coast of Africa in the year 

 1880 — these alone undoubtedly give employment to more ship- 

 ping than did the whole commerce of Italy at the most flourish- 

 ing period of the Roman Empire, with the exception of wheat, 

 marble and other stones, f According to the statistics of 1880, 



* A verj' few years sinoe, the United States had more than six hundred large 

 ships engaged in the whale fishery, and the number of American whalers, in 

 spite of the introduction of many new sources of oUs, still amounts to two 

 hundred and fifty. 



j[ The city of Rome imported from Sicily, from Africa, and from the Le- 

 vant, enormous quantities of grain for gratuitous distribution among the 

 lower classes of the capital. The pecuniary value of the gems, the spices, the 

 unguents, the perfumes, the cosmetics and the tissues, which came principally 

 from the East, was great, but these articles were neither heavy nor bulky and 

 their transportation required but a small amount of shipping. The marbles, 

 the obelisks, the statuary and other objects of art plundered in conquered 

 provinces by Roman generals and governors, the wild animals, such as ele- 

 phants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, camelopards and the larger beasts of prey 

 imported for slaughter at the public games, and the prisoners captured in for- 

 eign wars and brought to Italy for sale as slaves, or for butchery as gladiators, 

 furnished employment for much more tonnage than all the legitimate com- 

 merce of the empire, with the possible exception of wheat and wrought and 

 unwrought stone. 



Independently of the direct testimony of Latin authors, the Greek statuary, 

 the Egyjjtian obelisks, and the vast quantities of foreign marbles, granite, por 

 phyry, basalt, and other stones used ia sculpture and in architecture, which 



