378 
TRAVELS ON THE AMAZON. 
\June^ 
mere necessaries of life, it results that the only articles 
of commerce are the natural productions of the country, 
to catch or collect which requires an irregular and wan- 
dering life, better suited to an Indian’s habits than the 
settled and continued exertions of agriculture. These 
products are principally dried fish, und oil from the 
turtles’ eggs and cow-fish, for the inland trade \ and sal- 
saparilha, piassaba. India-rubber, Brazil-nuts, balsam of 
capivi, and cacao, for the exports. Though the coffee- 
plant and sugar-cane grow everywhere almost sponta- 
neously, yet coffee and sugar have to be imported from 
other parts of Brazil for home consumption. Beef is 
everywhere bad, principally because there are no good 
pastures near the towns where cattle brought from a 
distance can be fattened, and no one thinks of making 
♦ 
them, though it might easily be done. Vegetables are 
also very scarce and dear, and so are all fruits, except 
such as the orange and banana, which once planted only 
require the produce to be gathered when ripe ; fowls in 
Para are ^s. 6ci. each, and sugar as dear as in England. 
And all this because nobody will make it his business, 
to supply any one of these articles ! There is a kind of 
gambling excitement in trade which outshines all the 
steady profits of labour, and regular mechanics are con- 
stantly leaving their business to get a few goods on 
credit and wander about the country trading. 
There is, I should think, no country where such a 
universal and insecure system of credit prevails as here. 
There is hardly a trader, great or small, in the country, 
that can be said to have any capital of his own. The 
merchants in Para, who have foreign correspondents, have 
I 
