Art. I.-NOTES ON THE COMMERCE OF THE BLACK SEA.
TREBIZOND, one of the southern ports of the Black Sea, is the most important town of Turkey situated on that great inland sea. The other ports are Heraclea, Sinope, Samsoon, and Batoum, the latter near the Russian frontier of Georgia. The three former places are the ports in which the greater part of the goods and merchandise destined for the interior of Asia Minor are entered, while Trebizond mostly supplies the mountainous countries bordering on Circassia, a great part of Georgia, and Persia. The latter country receives some goods in its southern part through Bussorah, on the Persian Gulf; but by far the greater part of the British wares and cotton manufactures, as well as the sugar and rum which it requires from the new world, are shipped to Trebizond, generally by steam, from Constantinople, and carried thence across the Pylaen Mountains on the backs of horses and mules, through Erzeroum and Kars, to Tabriz, Teheran, and Ispahan. The cheap rate at which the looms of England are able to manufacture our cotton has completely driven ours out of a market in Turkey, especially in the Black Sea; and this must continue to be the case until means are taken to encourage the outlay of capital in the United States in factories of cotton goods. In the East, the excellence and superiority of American cottons are admitted; but the indigent circumstances of the inhabitants induce them to purchase what they can procure cheapest, without any regard to the nature of the article. Some idea of the importance of the commerce of this port will be conceived by the statement that, in 1846, $6,557,835 of manufactures passed through it for Persia, and that $420,500 of the same goods entered it for the consumption of the town and its vicinity. $145,900 of sugar, $84,030 of coffee, and $5,880 of spirits, mostly from New England, via Trieste and Constantinople, were, during the same year, imported for the use of the place. Its exports are of a miscellaneous nature, and during the same period amounted in all to $2,394,370, and the total exports to $8,230,825. What the commerce of the other ports aforementioned amount