SARDINIA

Vessels belonging to the Kingdom of Sardinia.

The accounts for the last seven years are not to be procured; but there is reason to believe that no very material increase has taken place during that period, and that the proportion of the national vessels of the larger class has been more augmented, while that of the smaller class has somewhat declined, as is observable in the preceding table of the five years from 1827 to 1831.

The chief articles which Sardinia imports from foreign countries are sugar, coffee, spices, cotton wool, cotton manufactured, indigo, cochineal, and other dyeing drugs, corn chiefly from the Black Sea, salted fish, salt, hides and leather, iron, steel, lead, copper, pitch and tar, tobacco, and timber. There are many smaller articles of luxury, whose aggregate amount bears but a trifling proportion in value to those here enumerated. The commerce in grain is casual, depending in a great degree on the productiveness of the harvests in Switzerland, to which country, when the domestic supply is found to be insufficient, the corn, chiefly wheat from the ports of Odessa and Taganrog, is transmitted to the Swiss districts bordering on the Sardinian territory.

A Statement of the Number and Tonnage of Vessels, distinguishing the Countries to which they belonged, which entered inwards and cleared outwards at the port of Genoa in the year 1834, exclusive of Coasters.

The variations in the years preceding and succeeding 1834 are so little as to render our filling the pages of this work with lengthened accounts quite unnecessary; and the particular year selected is sufficient to show the general nature and extent of the trade, and the respective countries with which it is carried on.

The cities of this kingdom whose population amounts to more than 10,000 souls, are the following.

The most valuable product of Sardinia which is exported is silk, but it has little connection with maritime commerce. The greater part of it, which goes to other countries, is transported by land-carriage, in order to supply the manufacturers of France, of Prussia, of Belgium, of Holland, and in some measure of England; for even to the latter country much is now sent by land through France, or by the Rhine. Oil is one of the greater productions exported from Genoa, after being collected there by means of the numerous coasting vessels with which the shores of Sardinia abound. The larger portion of this article is sent to England, where it is used by the wool-combers in the manufacture of cloth; but a considerable quantity of it is sent to Holland, and from thence into the interior of Germany, where it is applied to the same purposes. Rice is also exported by sea to France, though it can scarcely sustain the competition with that which is produced in the East Indies or in Carolina. Though much wine is made, it is almost wholly consumed at home; the quantity exported being trifling. Fruit is an article of foreign trade; and soap, white lead, essences, and perfumery, may be enumerated as the most prominent of the smaller