380 
TRAVELS ON THE AMAZON. 
Upon credit, are often double tliat sum, it is not to be 
wondered at that they are almost all of them constantly 
in debt to tlieir correspondents, wbo, when they have 
once thus got a hold on them, do not allow them easily 
to get free. 
It is this universal love of trade which leads, I think, 
to three great vices very prevalent here — drinking, gam- 
bling, and lying,- — besides a whole host of trickeries, 
cheatings, and debaucheries of every description. The 
life of a river trader admits of little enjoyment to a man 
who has no intellectual resources ; it is not therefore to be 
wondered at that the greater part of these men are more 
or less addicted to intoxication ; and when they can sup- 
ply themselves on credit with as much wine and spirits 
as they like, there is little inducement to break through 
the habit. A man who, if he had to pay ready money, 
would never think of drinking wine, when he can have 
it on credit takes twenty or thirty gallons with him in 
his canoe, which, as it has cost him nothing, is little 
valued, and he perhaps arrives at the end of his voyage 
without a drop. In the towns in the interior every shop 
sells spirits, and numbers of persons are all day drink- 
ing, taking a glass at every place they go to, and, by 
this constant dramming, ruining their health perhaps 
more than by complete intoxication at more distant inter- 
vals. Gambling is almost universal in a greater or less 
degree, and is to be traced to that same desire to gain 
money by some easier road than labour, which leads so 
many into commerce ; and the great number of traders,;|. 
who have to get a living out of an amount of business^j 
which would riot be properly sufficient for one- third the } 
