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THE DRAWBACK. 165 
benefit of the draw-back. In this last respect 
our a have labored under a very unjust 
It “a : difficult to conceive any equitable rea- 
son why merchants conveying their goods 
across the Prairies in wagons, should not be 
as much entitled to the protection of the 
Government, as those who transport them in 
vessels across the ocean. This assistance 
might have enabled our merchants to monopo- 
lize the rich trade of Chihuahua; and they 
would, no doubt, have obtained a share of 
that of the still richer departments of Durango 
and Zacatecas, as well as some portion of the 
Sonora and California trade. Then rating 
that of Chihuahua at two millions, half that 
of Durango at the same, and a million from 
Zacatecas, Sonora, etc., it would ascend to the 
clever amount of some five millions of dollars 
per annum. 
In point of revenue, the Santa Fé trade has 
been of but little importance to the govern- 
ment of Mexico. Though the amount of du- 
ties collected peer! at this port has usual- 
ly been fifty to eighty thousand dollars, yet 
nearly one-half has been embezzled by the 
net revenue of perhaps less than forty thou- 
sand dollars per annum. 
t is not an unimportant fact to be known, 
that, since the year 1831, few or none of the 
difficulties and dangers which once environed 
the Santa Fé adventurer have been encoun- 
tered. No traders have been killed by the 
