With the southern ports, the trade is in wine, brandy, iron, dried fruits, copper, tin, lead, &c.; with the northern, in wool, cotton, leather, chocolate, rice and salted fish.
To the Rio de la Plata, the exports are maize, sugar, brandy, pimento, indigo and woollens; these exports are said to amount to 2,000,000 dollars annually, and the imports from that government, to 860,000, consisting in mules, sheep, hams, tallow, wool, coca leaf, Paraguay tea and tin; and 20,000 mules arrive annually from Tucuman, for the service of the Peruvian mines. A great trade is also carried on with Guayaquil and Guatimala, but with Panama it is almost nothing.
From the Philippine islands, muslins, tea, and other East Indian goods, are imported, amounting to 270,230 dollars annually, in return for about 2,790,000, exported to Asia, in silver and gold.
The produce of the mines of Peru, including those of Chili, is about 1,730,000l. annually, whilst the value of European goods imported, is nearly 2,492,000l. in the same period; and the value of the agricultural produce exported, of Peru and Chili, is 866,000l.
In this country the population is much scattered, and composed of castes who have the greatest distrust of each other, the Indians being the most numerous, and leading a life of indolence and apathy; the natural resources of this fine region are unheeded; and its commerce, far from being restricted by the government, suffers only from the inactivity of its inhabitants.
Mines.—The mines, which in general are very rich, are very ill worked, and often abandoned from trivial causes; and the quicksilver necessary to obtain the metal from the ore, is procured in insufficient quantities, no exertions being made to clear the mines of that valuable substance, which exists in the greatest profusion in the country.
The mines which produce the greatest quantity of valuable metals, are those of Lauricocha, the province of Tarma, commonly called the mines of Pasco in the Cerro de Bombon, or high-table-land, in which is the small lake De los Reyes, to the south of the Cerro de Yauricocha; those of Gualgayoc, or Chota, in Truxillo, and the mines of Huantajaya.
The mines of Pasco were discovered by Huari Capac, an Indian, in 1630; they alone furnish two millions of piastres annually, and are at an elevation of more than 13,000 feet above the level of the sea; the metalliferous bed appears near the surface, the shafts being not more than from 90 to 400 feet in depth; water then makes its appearance, and causes great expence in clearing it. The bed is 15,747 feet long, and 7217 feet in breadth, and would produce, if worked by steam, as much as Guanaxuato in Mexico; its average annual produce is however 131,260 lbs. troy.
Gualgayoc and Micuipampa, commonly called Chota, were discovered in 1771, by Don Rodriguez de Ocaño a European; but in the time of the Incas, the Peruvians worked some silver vein, near the present town of Micuipampa.