The exports from America, the produce of their own soil, are corn, flour, timber, potash, provisions, and salt fish from the northern States; corn, timber, and tobacco from the middle States; and indigo, rice, cotton, tar, pitch, turpentine, timber, and provisions, to the West Indies, from the southern States. The imports are woollen, cotton goods, silks, hardware, earthen-ware, wines, brandy, tea, drugs, fruit, dye-stuffs, and India and colonial produce. By far the greatest portion of the trade of the United States is with Great Britain. The principal ports are Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Orleans.
The British settlements in America export, chiefly from Quebec and Halifax, corn, potash, wheel timber, masts, lumber, beaver and other furs, tar, turpentine, and salted fish from Newfoundland. The imports are woollen and cotton goods, hardware, tea, wine, India goods, groceries, &c.
The exports of the West India Islands are sugar, coffee, rum, ginger, indigo, drugs, and dye stuffs. The imports are lumber, woollen and cotton goods, fish, hardware, wine, groceries, hats, and other articles of dress, provisions, &c.
Brazil, and the late Spanish settlements in America, countries of great extent, and extremely fertile, promise to supply very valuable articles for commerce; even at present their exports are various, and chiefly of great importance. Some of the most useful drugs, and finest dye stuffs, are the produce of South America. Mahogany and other woods, sugar, coffee, chocolate, cochineal, Peruvian bark, cotton of the finest quality, gold, silver, copper, diamonds, hides, tallow, rice, indigo, &c. Carthagena, Porto Cabello, Pernambucco, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Ayres, are the principal ports on the east coast of South America; and Valparaiso, Calloa (the port of Lima), Guayaquil, Panama, and Acapulco, on the west coast.
Our sketch of commerce would be incomplete, did it not comprehend a short notice of the manner in which the trade of great part of Asia and Africa is conducted, by means of caravans. This is, perhaps, the most ancient mode of communication between nations; and, from the descriptions we possess, the caravans of the remotest antiquity were, in almost every particular, very similar to what they are at present. The human race was first civilized in the East. This district of the globe, though fertile in various articles which are well calculated to excite the desires of mankind, is intersected by extensive deserts; these must have cut off all communication, had not the camel,--which can bear a heavy burden, endure great famine, is very docile, and, above all, seems made to bid defiance to the parched and waterless desert, by its internal formation, and its habits and instinct,--been civilized by the inhabitants. By means of it they have, from the remotest antiquity, carried on a regular and extensive commerce.
The caravans may be divided into those of Asia and those of Africa: the great centre of the former is Mecca: the pilgrimage to this place, enjoined by Mahomet, has tended decidedly to facilitate and extend commercial intercourse. Two caravans annually visit Mecca; one from Cairo, and the other from Damascus. The merchants and pilgrims who compose the former come from Abyssinia; from which they bring elephants' teeth, ostrich feathers, gum, gold dust, parrots, monkies, &c. Merchants also come from the Senegal, and collect on their way those of Algiers, Tunis, &c. This division sometimes consists of three thousand camels, laden with oils, red caps, fine flannels, &c. The journey of the united caravans, which have been known to consist of 100,000 persons, in going and returning, occupies one hundred days: they bring back from Mecca all the most valuable productions of the East, coffee, gum arabic, perfumes, drugs, spices, pearls, precious stones, shawls, muslins, &c. The caravan of Damascus is scarcely inferior to that of Cairo, in the variety and value of the produce which it conveys to Mecca, and brings back from it, or in the number of camels and men which compose it. Almost every province of the Turkish empire sends forth pilgrims, merchants, and commodities to this caravan. Of the Asiatic caravans, purely commercial, we know less than of those which unite religion and commerce; as the former do not travel at stated seasons, nor follow a marked and constant route. The great object of those caravans is to distribute the productions of China and Hindustan among the central parts of Asia. In order to supply them, caravans set out from Baghar, Samarcand, Thibet, and several other places. The most extensive commerce, however, carried on in this part of Asia, is that between Russia and China. We have already alluded to this commerce, and shall only add, that the distance between the capitals of those kingdoms is 6378 miles, upwards of four hundred miles of which is an uninhabited desert; yet caravans go regularly this immense distance. The Russians and Chinese meet on the frontiers; where the furs, linen and woollen cloth, leather, glass, &c. of Russia, are exchanged for the tea, porcelain, cotton, rice, &c. of China. This intercourse is very ancient. There are also caravans of independent Tartars, which arrive on the Jaik and Oui, and bring Chinese and Indian commodities, which they interchange for those of Russia.
Tombuctoo is the great depot of central Africa: with it the maritime states of Egypt, Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis, and Morocco carry on a very extensive and lucrative trade by means of caravans. They take 129 days in travelling to Tombuctoo from the borders of the desert, but only fifty-four are spent in actual travelling. There is also another caravan which sets off from Wedinou, and after collecting salt at West Tagossa, proceeds to Tombuctoo. This goes as far as the White Mountains, near Cape Blanco, and is occupied five or six months in its journey. The merchandize carried by these caravans is German linens, Irish linens, muslins, woollen cloth, coral beads, pearls, silk, coffee, tea, sugar, shawls, brass nails, &c. &c. In exchange they bring back chiefly the produce of Soudan, viz. gold dust, gold rings, bars of gold, elephants' teeth, gum, grains of paradise, and slaves. There are also several caravans that trade between Cairo and the interior of Africa, which are solely employed in the traffic of slaves. There can be no doubt that caravans arrive at Tombuctoo from parts of Africa very distant from it, and not only inaccessible, but totally unknown, even by report, to Europeans, and even to the inhabitants of North Africa.
What a picture does modern commerce present of the boundless desires of man, and of the advancement he makes in intellect, knowledge, and power, when stimulated by these desires! Things familiar to use cease to attract our surprise and investigation; otherwise we should be struck with the fact, that the lowest and poorest peasant's breakfast-table is supplied from countries lying in the remotest parts of the world, of which Greece and Rome, in the plenitude of their power and knowledge, were totally ignorant. But the benefits which mankind derives from commerce are not confined to the acquisition of a greater share and variety of the comforts, luxuries, or even the necessaries of life. Commerce has repaid the benefits it has received from geography: it has opened new sources of industry; of this the cotton manufactures of Britain are a signal illustration and proof:--it has contributed to preserve the health of the human race, by the introduction of the most valuable drugs employed in medicine. It has removed ignorance and national prejudices, and tended most materially to the diffusion of political and religious knowledge. The natural philosopher knows, that whatever affects, in the smallest degree, the remotest body in the universe, acts, though to us in an imperceptible manner, on every other body. So commerce acts; but its action is not momentary; its impulses, once begun, continue with augmented force. And it appears to us no absurd or extravagant expectation, that through its means, either directly, or by enlarging the views and desires of man, the civilization, knowledge, freedom and happiness of Europe will ultimately be spread over the whole globe.