What I saw on the west coast of South and North America, and at the Hawaiian Islands.: By H. Willis Baxley, M.D.

GUANO TRADE.
moved annually, according to the original calculation, it is now
known that for three years but little less than five hundred
thousand tons have been shipped per annum. And so great
are the pecuniary wants of the Peruvian Government, from offi cial improvidence and delinquency, that it is now thought that
with corresponding recklessness and continued forced sale, the
deposit at these islands will become exhausted in ten or twelve
years. Large as will have been the aggregate revenue of Peruprobably from five hundred millions to eight hundred millions
of dollars fiom this source, yet there is not a country paying
its quota of that immense sum for the use of guano, that will
not have derived more benefit from it than this. Elsewhere
agricultural skill and industry have made it tributary to a produetion which has resulted in blessings-developing internal
improvements, affording means of education, promoting social
happiness and general prosperity. To Peru it seems to have
been a curse, for it pensions officials to fatten on public plunder; while it encourages perpetual revolutions, that place and
peculation may reward successful treason and reckless disturbers
of domestic peace. It fosters, too, a large standing army, resulting in oppression, paralyzed industry, and wars with their
attendant evils. Limited to the moderate expenditure actually
demanded by the administrative necessities of a small republic,
how great the good that might be made to flow to the country
from a judicious use of the large surplus revenue! And how
brief the time would be before an intelligent and enterprising
people, directed by wise and honest leaders, with such means at
command, would climb or pierce the Andes; and uniting the
Pacific and the Amazon with an iron band, would awake the
slumbering echoes of mountain passes with the panting engine,
and speak into life the dead elements of immense mineral and
agricultural wealth!
That an idea may be formed of the large amount of shipping
engaged in the guano trade, it may be stated that during six
months of this year-1860-from April first to September thirtieth, as ascertained from the United States Consul at Callao,
the tonnage of American vessels entering that port was 111,648
tons, being but 9,992 tons less than that of all the other foreign
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