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the best ship yards of the United States, for the service of the national marine in that hemisphere, since it would save one half the expense it would cost to build them in Spain, or in our ultramarine provinces.[1]
Coaches, chaises, and other wheel carriages, are also manufactured in the principal cities. Carpentry is sufficiently advanced; and a number of coaches, and a considerable quantity of furniture for the use and decoration of the houses in Cuba and Porto Rico, and others in that part of America, are exported, with great profit.
There are, also, various manufactories for the distillation of liquors, for beer and cyder, and some for refining sugar, but these last are few and imperfect. In Boston, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, cotton is worked by steam machinery, by means of which it is cleaned, spun, and twisted, at the same time. Manufactories of this kind are also established in many other places, and the use of steam machinery is becoming general in the country, to their great advantage, since it economizes labour, diminishes expense, and produces the desired effect with facility and promptitude. But the cotton stuffs of this country, are, nevertheless, still of very infe-
- ↑ It is strange that the Don should recommend the construction of ships for his majesty's navy, in the United States, after stating that all the vessels of the United States are remarkable for the defect of their timber. T.
