54 TEAT ELS THROUGH NORTH AMERICA: 
for many years to come, while laud remains 
cheap, and these articles can be imported and 
sent to them on reasonable terms. The articles 
chiefly in demand consist of hardware, woollen 
cloths, figured cottons, hosiery, haberdashery, 
earthenware, &c. &c, from England ; coffee, 
ruin, sugar!, from the West Indies ; tea, coarse 
muslins, and callicoes, from the East Indies, 
In return for these articles, the people of the 
back settlements send down for exportation the 
various kinds of produce which the country 
affords : wheat and flour, furs, skins, rice, in¬ 
digo, tobacco, pitch, tar, &c, &c. It is very 
evident, therefore, that the best situation for a 
trading town must be upon a long navigable 
river, so that the town may be open to the sea, 
and thus enabled to carry on a foreign trade, 
and at the same time be enabled, by means of 
an extensive water communication in an op¬ 
posite direction, to trade with the distant parts 
of the country, None of the inland towns 
have as yet increased to a great size. Lan¬ 
caster, w hich is the largest in all America, con¬ 
tains only nine hundred houses, and it is nearly 
double the size of any other inland one. 
Neither do the sea-port towns flourish, which 
are not well situated for carrying on an inland 
* Sugar is not sent very far back into the country, as it 
is procured at much less expence from the maple-tree. 
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