FROSTS ON COTTON CROPS-COAL. This shows a total of receipts for pilotage, for the five years commenc ing 1st September, 1840, of.... A total of expenditures in the service for the same period Showing a total of profits for the five years, of........ Annual average of profits 211 $636,610 97 226,885 18 409,725 79 Making average distributable share of each pilot, annually, $1,634 90. $81,745 16 The expenses embrace the actual outlays of the association in conducting the business of piloting. They do not include the hire of hands, owned by the association, nor the interest upon the capital of the association, nor the private expenses of its members. They are the necessary expenses in conducting the business. The association have created a capital of about $40,000 in pilot-boats, slaves and fixtures, by withholding a portion of the distributable share of each pilot for a number of years. These sums do not appear upon the expense account of the service, nor is the interest upon their capital stock, nor the hire of hands owned by them, charged to that account, as might well be, to swell the footing up of the bill of outlays. 2. COTTON CROPS AS INFLUENCED BY FROST. The following, taken from the Pottsfield Mining Journal, is the quantity of coal imported, &c., into this country from June 30th, 1821, to June 30th, 1845, both years inclusive, in tons of twenty-eight bushels, obtained from the official documents at Washington, together with the quantity of anthracite coal, sent to market during the same period: In 1842 the colliers, and others interested in the coal trade of this region, presented petitions to Congress, asking for an increased duty on coal, in which the petitioners pledged themselves that, if a protective duty was placed on foreign coal, and the price was not reduced in the principal Atlantic markets, after a period of five years from the imposition of the duty, they would not ask its continuance. Congress imposed a specific duty of $1 75 per ton, and to show that the result has been as they anticipated, we have procured, from the sale books of dealers, a table of prices of coal in the three largest Atlantic cities, during the past seven years, in order that it may be seen what has been the effect of the Tariff of 1842 on the prices of coal. The following table shows the wholesale prices at Philadelphia, and the retail prices at New York and Boston: VOL. II.-40 625 The following list exhibits the number of furnaces and rolling-mills in Pennsylvania and New Jersey that are now in operation, and in a rapid course of completion, using anthracite coal as a fuel: FURNACES. 3 at Stanhope, producing 180 tons per week; 1 Lackawana, 45; 2 Fishing Creek, 150; 1 Roaring Creek, 45; 5 Danville, 275; 1 Red Point, 75; 1 Shamokin, 45; 1 Harrisburg, 55; 1 Mount Joy, 30; 3 Columbia, 90; 1 York, 40; 1 St. Clair, Schuylkill county, 75; 1 Pottsville (first one built), 35; 1 Valley Furnace. Schuylkill county, 30; 1 Reading, 75; 3 Phoenixville, 165; 1 Conshehocken, 40, 2 Spring Mill, 100; 4 Easton, 220; 3 Cranesville, 250; 2 Allentown, 200; i Birdsborough, 30; 1 Mauch Chunk, 20; 1 Conestoga, near Lancaster, 100--Aggregate, 2,360 tons per week. ROLLING MILLS. 1 at Lackawana manufactures annually, 6,000 tons; 1 Wilkesbarre, 12,000; 1 Danville (railroad iron), 10,000; 1 Danville, 1,000; 2 Reading, 10,000; 1 Little Schuylkill, 2,000; 1 Pottsgrove, 2,000; 2 Norristown, 8,000; 2 on the Schuylkill, Philadelphia, 6,000; 1 Manayunk, 2,000; 1 Trenton (railroad iron), 10,000; i Conshehocken, 1,500; 3 Phoenixville, 15,000; 3 on the Delaware, above Philadelphia, 6,000; 1 Duncannon, 6,000; 1 near Harrisburg (opposite), 3,000; 1 Harrisburg, 3,000; 1 Bridgton, N. J., 3,000; 1 Boonton, N. J., 6,000; 1 Jersey City, 2,000-Aggregate, 114,500 tons. The foregoing list exhibits a large increase of furnaces and rolling mills, since our last report. It is an indisputable fact, that only four anthracite furnaces were in operation prior to 1842. 4. THE SUGAR INTERESTS. Lord John Russell, the other day, in Parliament made these sensible remarks: "The consumption of cotton wool in this country, and the use of it in our manu factures, gives an impulse and encouragement to the slave trade in the United States; and yet, if any one were to say that we would not allow cotton wool to come into this country-if we were to say that before we would admit cotton wool we would force the United States to a solution of that tremendous problem that hangs over them-that tremendous problem, whether they shall keep their black population in a state of slavery, or whether, applying the great article of their declaration of rights, they shall, at once, give them the supreme power in many States-the power they would be entitled to, of electing the majority of representatives-to say, that we would insist on the emancipation of all their slaves, or that we would not take their cotton wool, would be nothing less than insanity. Sir, it is the same thing with regard to several other productions." This liberal minister, in lieu of the 63s. now imposed on slave-grown Muscovado sugar, and 23s. on foreign free-grown, proposes the following general tariff, abolishing all distinctions between slave and free: GEOLOGY OF WESTERN STATES. GEOLOGY OF WESTERN STATES. 1.-FACTS IN RELATION TO THE MISSISSIPPI, Professor Forshey, Civil Engineer of Louisiana, has communicated the following, which appears in the columns of that valuable paper, the Concordia Intelligencer: THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER takes its rise in latitude 48 deg. north, and discharges its waters into the Gulf of Mexico in latitude 29° 5". It flows through a channel, 3,000 miles long. Its course is south, nearly fourteen deg. east. Its width averages about half a mile. Its width does not increase with the volume of its water, but is about the same at Galena, 1,600 miles above the mouth, as at New Orleans, where the volume is six times as great. It is 645 yards wide at Vidalia, Louisiana. It drains an area of 300,000 square miles. Its mean velocity at the surface, for the year, opposite Vidalia, is 1.88 miles per hour. Its mean depth per annum, across the entire channel, at the same place, is about 60 feet. The mean velocity is reduced about 15 per cent. by friction against the bottom. The total amount of water discharged per annum, in cubic feet, is 8,092,118,940,000. THE DELTA.-The Delta of the Mississippi river extends from the Balize to near Cape Girardeau, 40 miles above the mouth of the Ohio. Its length is 600 miles. Its width, at the mouth of the Ohio is 50 miles. is 35 (6 New Madrid, lat. "361° The basin of the delta, then, has an area of 31,200 square miles, and is, therefore, greater than Lake Erie and Lake Michigan together. Inferences for Speculators.-Since the amount of sedimentary matter in the Mississippi water is estimated at about one twelve-hundredth part, by measure, of the whole volume discharged per annum; and since the alluvial deposits in the delta are estimated to have a mean depth of 50 feet, and to have been wholly deposited by the Mississippi river and its tributaries, the least possible time, upon these hypotheses, required for the deposition of the delta, would be 13,684 years. The waier discharged in the same time, would fill a sea 850 miles square, and one mile deep. 2.-SUGAR CROP OF THE WORLD. The Times makes the following estimate of the sugar crop of the world: The whole production of the sugar-growing countries of the world in 1844 is set down at 778,000 tons, of which 200,000 tons were furnished by Cuba alone. In the following year Cuba produced only 80,000 tons, but the increase from other sources was so great, that the total produce amounted to 769,000 tons, which was very little short of that in 1844. The consumption of sugar in the world is estimated at 840,000 tons, of which the United Kingdom consumès about 250,000, the rest of Europe 425,000, the United States of America 150,000, and Canada and the other British colonies 15,000. The growth of the United States does not exceed 100,000. The surplus stock held in Europe, at the end of each year, has been about 130,000 tons. The Report of the Patent Office makes the crop of the United States of America, in the year 1845, 226,026,000 pounds. The consumption of the country is upward of 400,000,000 pounds. The crop of Louisiana sugar this year will certainly be greatly short of the last crop.-ED. THE COMMERCIAL REVIEW. Volume II. OCTOBER, 1846. No. 4. Art. I.—EXPEDITION OF ST. DENIS TO MEXICO ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SPANIARDS IN THE TERRITORY BETWEEN THE RIO BRAVO AND RED RIVERS.* THE following accounts are derived, almost exclusively, from documents original and unpublished, etc., and nearly all as yet unknown, except to a few individuals. They will be found to vary materially from those hitherto presented, for which the authorities have been Charlevoix, Le Page, Dupratz, and La Harpe. The latter is correct so far as the knowledge of the writer extended; Dupratz is erroneous and imperfect; and Charlevoix misrepresents most strangely many of the circumstances on which he certainly possessed the means of accurate information. These circumstances cannot be considered unimportant, as they are connected with the formation of the first establishment of a permanent nature made by the Spaniards in Texas. At the period to which the first portion of these extracts relates, 1715-18, Louisiana was in the possession of Antoine Crozat, under a grant from Louis XIV. of France, made in 1712; and Antoine de la Motte Cadillac was the Governor. The Company was then transferred to the Western Company, under which Bienville ected as Governor. LA MOTTE CADILLAC, on arriving in Louisiana, had found a letter addressed to the governor of the Colony, in January, 1711, by Father Francisco Hidalgo, a Franciscan [Recollet] missionary, from Queretaro, in Mexico, who had resided for some time among the Cenis Indians, on the upper waters of the river Neches, representing the condition of that country as highly favorable for settlement, and for trade with the northern provinces of the Spaniards. This letter was written at the time when commercial intercourse was allowed between the French settlements and Mexico, and under the impression that it would be continued; yet the governor, notwithstanding the subsequent revival of the prohibitory regulations of the Spaniards, and the repulse of Crozat's vessels from Vera Cruz, was induced by the observations of the missionary to hope that he might still succeed in establishing an indirect trade with the provinces above mentioned; and he resolved to make an effort for the purpose. There was at that time not a single port or establishment whatsoever, of civilized persons, in the whole division of America, between the Mississippi and the Rio Bravo del Norte, except in the narrow valley of New Mexico, traversed by the head waters of the latter stream; or farther south, within two hundred miles of the Mexican Gulf, between the Rio Bravo and the Paunco (Tampico), those vast regions were only known from the accounts of the two or three From an unpublished History of FLORIDA, LOUISIANA, and TEXAS, by Robert Greenhow, author of a History of Oregon and California. Mr. Greenhow has kindly furnished us this article. Spanish expeditions through them already mentioned, and their only inhabitants, other than savages, were some missionaries from Mexico, or vagabonds from the same country; one of whom, named Urrutia, had for some time exercised authority as a chief, over a tribe near the Trinity river. The Spanish settlements nearest to the Mississippi, were those of New Mexico, New Biscay, Coahuila, and New Leon, south of the Rio del Norte, below its junction with the Conchos; the nearest port of that nation to those of the French, being the presidio or fort and mission of San Juan Baptista, which had been then recently founded within two leagues of the Rio Bravo on the south, at the distance of more than two hundred leagues from its mouth. Farther south were Coahuila, or Monclova, the capital of the province of Coahuila, and Saltillo, north-west of which was Chihuahua, all of them small towns; and beyond these, at great distances, were the cities of Durango, Zacatecas, and San Luis Potosi, on the outskirts of the old and thickly-peopled provinces of New Spain. For communication with these settlements of the Spaniards, two modes presented themselves to the governor of Louisiana; either to form a colony or factory on the west coast of the gulf, at some point most convenient to the towns of the interior, or to make all the communications pass through the Mississippi and the Red river, and thence southward overland; the territories bordering upon the gulf, west of the Mississippi, being regarded as impassable, from the number of the streams and the extent of the marshes, as well as from the savage character of their inhabitants. The former mode was in every respect preferable; but the colony of Louisiana, then containing not more than five or six hundred white persons, was too feeble for the support and protection of a settlement so distant, which would infallibly be soon attacked by the Spaniards; and La Motte Cadillac accordingly determined to have an experimental expedition made, on the other line of route, in order to ascertain how far commercial intercourse, thus carried on, might be practicable and profitable. The person chosen by him to make the attempt, was the Canadian Louis de St. Denis, who had distinguished himself by his courage and shrewdness in several trading voyages up the Red river, and was then in command of a small post near the entrance of the Bayou St. Jean into Lake Pontchartrain, within a few miles of the spot now occupied by New Orleans. St. Denis was accordingly furnished with some goods from the public store, at Dauphin island, and with a commission or passport from the Governor,* to be exhibited in The following translation of this passport, is made from the copy attached to the report of the examination of St. Denis, at Mexico, in June, 1715: "We, Antoine de la Motte Cadillac, Seigneur of Davaguet and Monderet, Governor of Dauphin Island, Fort Louis, Biloxi, and of the country and province of Louisiana, do hereby authorize the Sieur de St. Denis, and the twenty-four Canadians of his party, to take with him any number of Indians, whom he thinks necessary, to the Red river, or wherever else he may choose to go, in search of the Mission of the Recollet, Father Francisco Hidalgo, agreeably to the letter written by him, on the 17th of April, 1711, for the purpose of buying horses and cattle for the colony and province of Louisiana; and we request all whom it may concern, to suffer the said Sieur de St. Denis and his party to pass without impediment. In faith whereof, we have signed this, and seal it with the seal of our arms, and have caused it to be countersigned by our Secretary, at Fort Louis, Louisiana, this 12th of September, 1713. By my Secretary, OLIVER." LA MOTTE CADILLAC. |