ortance. 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, p