COMMERCE. 



185 



nearly one-half. Men shrink at the eighty days in a canoe, when they 

 will jump at the twelve in a steamer. 



The steamer will also increase commerce and trade by creating 

 artificial wants ; men will travel who did not travel before ; articles of 

 luxury — such as Yankee clocks, cheap musical instruments, <fcc. — will be 

 introduced, and the Indians will work to obtain them; and, in short, 

 when the wonders that the steamboat and railroad have accomplished 

 are taken into consideration, I shall not be thought rash in predicting 

 that in one year from the time of the appearance of the steamer, 

 Arebalo's twenty thousand dollars will be made forty thousand. 



Thus we shall have twenty thousand dollars' worth of goods going 

 up from Loreto to Chasuta, paying at least one hundred per cent.; and 

 twenty thousand dollars going down, paying another hundred per cent.; 

 giving to the steamboat company (who would monopolize the trade) 

 forty thousand dollars a year, against twenty thousand dollars of 

 expenses. 



There would be no difficulty in getting a supply of fuel. My 

 Peruvian steamer would have to make her way slowly up, for the first 

 time, by collecting and cutting up the abundant drift-wood on the 

 islands ; but she could readily contract with the governors of the thirty- 

 six villages between Para and Chasuta for a regular supply. The 

 Brazilian government has an organized and enlisted corps of laborers, 

 under the orders of the military commandants, and I should suppose 

 would be willing to employ them in furnishing wood, on account of the 

 great advantages to be derived from the increase of trade. The Indians 

 of the Peruvian villages are entirely obedient to their governors ; and 

 a sufficient number of them may always be had, at wages of twelve 

 and a half cents per day, with about three cents more for their main- 

 tenance. This amount of wages may be reduced one-half by paying 

 them in articles for their consumption, bought at Para or brought from 

 the United States. 



The only difficulty that I have in my calculations is that I know 

 there are not forty thousand dollars in the whole province ; its produc- 

 tions must find their way to the Pacific, on the one hand, and to the 

 Atlantic, on the other, before they can be converted into money. My 

 steamer, therefore, to be enabled to buy and sell, must communicate 

 at Loreto with a larger steamer, plying between that place and Barra, 

 at the mouth of the Rio Negro, a distance of eight hundred and forty 

 miles ; and this with another still larger, between Barra and Para, a 

 distance of a thousand miles. 



These three steamers (however much I may be out of my calculations 



