OBJECTS OF MODEEN COMMERCE. " 63 



England now annually imports more than 1,000,000 tons of sugar, 

 about 250,000 tons of jute and esparto, Y30,000 tons of cotton, of 

 whicli the value of $350,000,000 is exported again in the form of 

 manufactured goods — including, by a strange industrial revolu- 

 tion, a large amount of cotton yarn and cotton tissues sent to 

 India, and directly or indirectly paid for by raw cotton to be 

 manufactured in England — 30,050 tons of tobacco, from 200,000 

 to 400,000 tons of guano, hundreds of thousands of tons of tea, 

 coffee, cacao, caoutchouc, gutta-percha, and numerous other im- 

 portant articles of trade wholly unknown, as objects of commerce, 

 to the ancient European world ; and this immense importation is 

 balanced by a corresponding amount of exportation, not consist- 

 ing, however, by any means, exclusively of articles new to com- 

 merce.* 



have been found in the remains of ancient Rome, show that the Imperial capi- 

 tal must have employed an immense amount of tonnage in the importation of 

 heavy articles for which there could have been no return freight, unless in the 

 way of military transportation. Some of the Egyptian obeUsks at Rome weigh 

 upwards of four hundred tons, and many of the red granite columns from the 

 same country must have exceeded one hundred tons. Greek and African mar- 

 bles were largely used not only for columns, entablatures, and solid walls, but 

 for casing the exterior and veneering the interior of public and private build- 

 ings. Scaurus imported, for the scene alone of a temporary theatre designed 

 to stand scarcely for a month, three hundred and sixty columns, which were 

 disposed in three tiers, the lower range being forty-two feet in height. — See 

 Pliny, Nat. Hist., Lib. xxxvi. 



Italy produced very httle for export, and her importations, when not con- 

 sisting of booty, were chiefly paid for in coin which was principally either the 

 spoil of war or the fruit of official extortion. 



* Many of these articles would undoubtedly have been made known to the 

 Greeks and Romans and have figured in their commerce, but for the slowness 

 and costliness of ancient navigation, which, in the seas familar to them, was 

 suspended for a full third of the year from the inability of their vessels to cope 

 with winter weather. The present speed and economy of transportation have 

 wrought and are still working strange commercial and industrial revolutions. 

 Algeria now supplies Northern Germany with fresh cauliflowers, and in the 

 early spring the market-gardeners of Naples find it more profitable to send 

 their first fruits to St. Petersburg than to furnish them to Florence and Rome. 

 Cirio, a very enterprising Itahan of the agricultural class, has been, if not the 

 actual pioneer in this commercial industry, certainly the most efiicient agent in 

 carrying it on. Freight cars, marked with his name and loaded with every 

 variety of early produce from the seas and shores of Southern Italy, might be 

 seen daily, during the spring of 1882, steaming northward through the penin- 

 sula on their way to hyperborean Russia. 



