Special markets and warehouses also exist for almost every other major commodity. Near the Circus Maximus there is the noisy, fetid cattle market where horses, kine, and asses change hands amid coarse chaffering very much as in the trade for slaves. There are likewise great repositories for oil, flax, lumber, wool, spices, etc.--some private, some under government supervision; the clang from all kinds of smithies and metal workshops is incessant, and the factories for manufacturing bronze statues are almost as large as those for the stone sculptures. [Illustration: ENVIRONS OF ROME] =218. The Tiber Trip to Ostia: the Merchant Shipping.=--If, however, one would learn the real sum of Roman industry and commerce, it is needful to charter a slim swiftly-pulling wherry and to glide down the yellow Tiber to Ostia. All the way the craft has to dodge the enormous barges, but the shores are covered with delightful villas, small villages, or with prosperous farms raising poultry, flowers, vegetables, and the like for the city trade. In the distance across the level campagna can be seen the impressive array of the solemn arches of the great aqueducts, reaching back into the hills and bringing their supply of pure water to Rome. Ostia itself, however, is strictly a harbor town, with an elaborate series of breakwaters, dredged basins, naval docks, mercantile docks, and a perfect jumble of shipping. The vessels have come from all parts of the Mediterranean, and there is even a battered trader that has coasted all the way from Britain with a cargo of tin ore. The smaller craft can trust sometimes to their oars in a calm, but all the larger must depend on their unwieldy lateen sails which swing from two or three long yards crossing as many masts. By far the largest merchantmen are the Egyptian corn ships, and one of these, that is just being moved to the quay by a gang of shouting half-naked stevedores, is of somewhat unusual size. We are informed she is fully 180 feet long and 45 feet in beam.[134] She is provided with elaborate and decidedly comfortable cabins for many passengers, so that it is easy to believe the story that when the Jew Paullus (previously mentioned) on his compulsory trip to Rome was wrecked off Malta, 276 persons were rescued from the Alexandrian merchantman whereon he and his guards had embarked.