1852.] 
SYSTEM OF CREDIT, 
379 
goods out on credit ; they sell on credit to the smaller 
merchants or shopkeepers of Para; these again supply 
on credit the negociantes in the country towns. From 
these last the traders up the different rivers get theii- 
supplies also on credit. These traders give small parcels 
of goods to half-civilized Indians, or to any one who will 
take them, to go among the wild Indian tribes and buy 
up their produce. They, however, have to give credit to 
the Indians, who will not work till they have been paid 
six months beforehand ; and so they are paid for salsa- 
parilha or oil, which is still in the forest or the lake. 
And at every step of this credit there is not the slightest 
security ; and robbery, waste, and a profuse squandering 
away of the property of others, is of constant occurrence. 
— To cover all these chances of loss, the profits are pro- 
portionably great at every step, and the consumer often 
has to pay two shillings a yard for calico worth twopence, 
and everything else in like proportion. It is these ap- 
parently enormous profits that lead mechanics and others 
into trade, as they do not consider the very small busi- 
ness that can be done in a given time, owing to the 
poverty of the country and the enormous number of 
traders in proportion to the purchasers. It seems a very 
nice and easy way of getting a living, to sell goods at 
double the price you pay for them, and then again to sell 
the produce you receive at double what you pay for it ; 
but as the greater part of the small traders do not get 
rid of more than a hundred pounds’ worth of goods in 
a year, and the expenses of Indians and canoes, their 
families and bad debts, wines and liquors, and the waste 
which always takes place where everything is obtained 
