in Mexico; but very considerable progress has also been made in other branches of industry dependent on luxury and wealth. Chandeliers, and other ornaments of great value, were recently executed in gilt bronze, for the new cathedral of Puebla, of which the bishop possesses more than 550,000 livres of revenue*. Although the most elegant carriages driven through the streets of Mexico and Santa Fe de Bogota, at 2300 and 2700 metres† of elevation above the surface of the ocean, come from London, very handsome ones are also made in New Spain. The cabinet makers execute articles of furniture, remarkable for their form and the colour and polish of the wood, which is procured from the equinoctial region, adjoining the coast, especially from the forests of Orizaba, San Blas, and Colima. It is impossible to read without interest in the gazette of Mexico, that even in the provincias internas, for example at Durango, two hundred leagues north of the capital, harpsicords and piano-fortes are manufactured. The Indians display an indefatigable patience in the manufacture of small toys, in wood, bone, and wax. In a country where the ve * £22,448. 9,387 and 11,020 feet. Trans. getation affords the most precious productions*, and where the workman may choose at will the accidents of colour and form among the roots, the medullary prolongations of the wood, and the kernels of fruits, these toys of the Indians, may one day become an important article of exportation for Europe. We know what large sums of money this species of industry brings in to the inhabitants of Nuremberg, and the mountaineers of Berchtolsgaden, and the Tyrol, who, however, can only use in the manufacture of boxes, spoons, and children's toys, pine, cherry, and walnut-tree wood. The Americans of the United States, send to the island of Cuba, and the other West India Islands, large cargos of furniture, for which they get the wood chiefly from the Spanish colonies. This branch of industry will pass into the hands of the Mexicans, when, excited by a noble emulation, they shall begin to derive advantage from the productions of their own soil. We have hitherto spoken of the agriculture, the mines, and the manufactures, as the three principal sources of the commerce of New Spain. It remains for us to exhibit a view of the exchanges which are carried on with * Swietenia Cedrela and Caesalpinia wood; trunks of Desmanthus and Mimosa, of which the heart is a red, approaching to black. the interior, the mother country, and with other parts of the New Continent. Thus we shall successively treat of the interior commerce, which transmits the superfluous produce of one Mexican province to another; of the foreign commerce with America, Europe, and Asia, and the influence of these three branches of commerce on the public prosperity, and the augmentation of the national wealth. We shall not repeat the just complaints respecting the restriction of commerce, and the prohibitory system, which serve for basis to the colonial legislation of Europe. It would be difficult to add to what has been already said on that subject, at a time when the great problems of political economy occupy the mind of every man. Instead of attacking principles, whose falsity and injustice are universally acknowledged, we shall confine ourselves to the collection of facts, and to the proving of what importance the commercial relations of Mexico with Europe may become, when they shall be freed from the fetters of an odious monopoly, disadvantageous even to the mother country. . The interior commerce comprehends both the carriage of produce and goods into the interior of the country, and the coasting along the shore of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, This commerce is not enlivened by an in terior navigation on rivers or artificial canals; for like Persia, the greatest part of New Spain is in want of navigable rivers. The Rio del Norte, which from its breadth hardly yields to the Mississipi, flows through regions susceptible of the highest cultivation, but which in their present state, exhibit nothing but a vast desert. This great river has no greater influence on the activity of the inland trade, than the Missouri, the Cassiquiare and the Ucayale, which run through the Savannahs, and uninhabited forests of North America. In Mexico, between the 16° and 23° of latitude, the part of the country where the population is most concentrated, the Rio de Santiago alone, can be rendered navigable at a moderate expence. The length of its course,* equals that of the Elbe and the Rhone. It fertilizes the table lands of Lerma, Salamanca, and Selaya, and might serve for the conveyance of flour from the intendancies of Mexico and Guanaxuato, towards the western coast. We have already hand, we must re provedt, that if on the one nounce the project of establishing an inland navigation between the capital and the port of Tampico, on the other, it would be very easy to cut canals in the valley of Mexico, * The Rio Santiago, the old Rio Tololotlan, is more than 170 leagues in length. Chap. iii, and viii. from the most northern point, the village of Huehuetoca, to the southern extremity, the small town of Chalco. commerce. The communications with Europe and Asia› being only carried on, from the two ports of Vera Cruz and Acapulco, all the objects of exportation and importation necessarily pass through the capital, which has become through that means the central point of the interior Mexico, situated on the ridge of the Cordilleras, commanding as it were the two seas, is distant in a straight line from Vera Cruz 69 leagues, 66 from Acapulco, 79 from Oaxaca, and 440 leagues from Santa Fe of New Mexico. From this position of the capital, the most frequented roads, and the most important for commerce, are, 1st. the road from Mexico to Vera Cruz, by Puebla and Xalapa; 2d, the road from Mexico to Acapulco by Chilpanzingo; 3d, the road from Mexico to Guatimala, by Oaxaca; 4th, the road from Mexico to Durango and Santa Fe of New Mexico, vulgarly called el camino de tierra dentro. We may consider the roads which lead from Mexico, either to San Luis Potosi and Monterey, or to Valladolid and Guadalaxara, as ramifications of the great road of the provincias internas. When we examine the physical constitution of the country, we see, that whatever may one day be |