It is not, perhaps, to be wondered at that the larger profits of cattle-breeding should for a time have superseded the pursuits of agriculture, but the inconvenience and evils of an habitual dependence upon any foreign country, particularly upon one at such a distance as North America, for the daily bread of a whole population, became at last so manifest that the legislature found itself called upon to interpose to put an end to it, and to pass such enactments as were necessary to foster and protect the agricultural interests of the native proprietors. The consequence has been that the province of Buenos Ayres, which is capable of producing as good wheat as any country in the world, has again commenced growing not only a sufficiency for the consumption of its own population, but for exportation; and in the last two or three years both flour and corn have been articles of shipment from the River Plate, chiefly to Brazil. If we except the flour, the principal articles of import from the United States for several years were the coarse unbleached cloths of their own manufacture, called "domestics," of which, for a time, very large quantities were sent to the Spanish-American markets; indeed the very low prices at which these goods were long sold brought them into great demand in almost every part of the world where they were admitted, although now, I believe, like the printed goods from Germany, they can with difficulty compete with similar manufactures made at Manchester. Their other imports into Buenos Ayres consist of spirits, soap, sperm candles, dried and salted provisions, tobacco, furniture of an ordinary though showy description, and deals. From the returns laid before Congress it appears that the amount of the direct trade between the United States and the river Plate from 1829 to 1836 was as follows, calculated at the rate of five dollars per pound sterling:-- Exports from the Imports from Year. United States. River Plate. 1829 £125,210 £182,422 1830 125,977 286,376 1831 131,956 185,620 1832 184,608 312,034 1833 139,945 275,423 1834 194,367 286,023 1835 141,783 175,723 1836 76,986 210,700 Besides their direct trade, the North Americans have at times found a profitable employment for their shipping in carrying Buenos Ayrean produce (jerk beef) to the Havana, and in the coasting trade between Brazil and the River Plate, though the latter is now for the most part taken out of their hands by the Brazilians themselves, who of late years have become the carriers of their own produce.