CHAPTER XV. TRADE. Advantages of the situation of Buenos Ayres in a commercial point of view. Amount of Imports into Buenos Ayres in peaceable times. From what Countries. Great proportion of the whole British Manufactures. Articles introduced from other parts of the World. The Trade checked by the Brazilian War, and subsequent Civil Disturbances. Recovering since 1831. Proportion of it taken off by Monte Video since its independence. Comparative view of Exports. Scarcity of Returns. Capabilities of the Country. Advantage of encouraging Foreigners. The Wool Trade becoming of importance owing to their exertions. Other useful productions which may be cultivated in the interior. Account of the origin and increase of the Horses and Cattle in the Pampas. IN a commercial point of view we have only to look at the map to be satisfied of the great importance of the geographical position of Buenos Ayres. From the Amazons along a line of coast upwards of 2000 miles in extent, the River Plate affords the only means of communicating with all those vast regions in the interior of the continent comprised between the Andes and the mountainous districts which bound Brazil to the west. Not only the provinces of the Argentine Republic and of Paraguay, but the now independent states of Bolivia and Peru, are as yet only accessible from the Atlantic through the Rio de La Plata. If there is but little intercourse between these states at present, it must be ascribed to political causes alone, and to such confined and restrictive notions as are, perhaps, to be expected from governments in their infancy. The people of Bolivia and the eastern districts of Peru, whose wants from Europe were formerly supplied through Buenos Ayres, are now under separate governments of their own, which seem anxious to display their commercial as well as political independence of their old connexions by endeavouring to force the trade through other channels more immediately under their own control; but, however desirous those governments may be, under present circumstances, to establish a direct intercourse with Europe through their own ports in the Pacific, and however well adapted those ports may be for the supply of the provinces upon the west coast of America, there can be no doubt, so far as regards all those which lie to the eastward of the Cordillera, that, whenever the intermediate rivers shall be navigated by steam, for which they are so admirably calculated, the people of those vast countries will be much more easily supplied with all they want from Europe by inland water-carriage direct from Buenos Ayres than by the present circuitous route round Cape Horn, and the subsequent expensive convey |