prohibited,) with European linens, cottons, and hardware, mantas, and even furniture from the United States, which are introduced through Refugio, where the duties are never very burthensome, even in cases where their payment is not entirely evaded. The goods are landed upon the coast by small American schooners, and afterwards conveyed into the Interior by a sort of mixed breed of French, Spaniards, and Italians, who are perfectly acquainted with the country and the wants of the different towns, and time their remittances accordingly. Several of these adventurers were pointed out to me, who came to Catorce, at first, with a board of images upon their heads, but now rank amongst the most respectable merchants of the place. Throughout Mexico, indeed I believe in every part of Spanish America, they are ignorant of the distinction made in Europe between the wholesale and the retail trade. There is nothing at all inconsistent with their ideas of propriety in keeping a shop: a "tienda" is, on the contrary, attached to every Hacienda, and the proprietor regards the profit on the sale of the goods, with which it is his business to keep it supplied, as a part of his yearly income. This was always done, too, in remote parts of the country in great mining "negotiations;" and thus the wages of the miners being naturally exchanged at the shop for the supplies of which they might be in want, a small capital was sufficient to keep up the circulating medium required, the whole of the weekly issues returning almost immediately into the
