INTERNAL CUSTOM-HOUSES. 67 
simple transfer of property from town to town, 
and from village to village, in the same de- 
partment, is attended by precisely the same 
proportion of risk, and requires the same punc- 
tilious accuracy in the accompanying docu- 
ments. Even the produce and manufactures 
of the country are equally subject to these 
embarrassing regulations. New Mexico has 
no internal custom-houses, and is therefore 
exenipt from this rigorous provision ; but from 
Chihuahua south every village has its reve- 
nue officers; so that the same stock of mer- | 
chandise sometimes pays the internal duty at 
least half-a-dozen times before the sale is com- 
pleted. 
Now, to procure this same guia, which is 
the cause of so much difficulty and anxiety 
in the end, is no small affair. Before the au- 
thorities condescend to draw a single line on 
paper, the merchant must produce an en- 
dorser for the tornaguia, which is a certificate 
from the custom-house to which the cargo 
goes directed, showing that the goods have 
been legally entered there. A failure in the 
return of this document within a prescribed 
limit of time,subjects the endorser to a forfeit- 
- ure equal to the amount of the impost. Much 
~ inconvenience and not a little risk are also oc- 
easioned on this score by the irregularity—I 
may say, — of the mails. 
s mails, I beg leave to observe, 
that there = no conveniences of this kind 
in New Mexico, except on the route from 
Santa Fé to Chihuahua, and these are very 
