The exports are estimated at 5,000,000 Add for short manifests 1,000,000 For charges, 10 per cent. 600,000 ---------- 6,600,000 --------- 360,840 This difference, which upon the whole was of little importance, was at once accounted for by the investments of foreign capital in the purchase of every kind of property in the country previously to the war with Brazil. Although foreigners, as has been already observed, were heavy sufferers by the events of that war, the country was benefited in a way which could hardly have been foreseen. In the impossibility of making returns to Europe during the continuance of the blockade, the greater part of the large amount of foreign property locked up in it was laid out in cattle-farms, agricultural establishments, saladeros (where the _jerk_ beef is made), houses, and a variety of speculations, the general tendency of which was greatly to improve the real resources of the country. Thus, although upon the whole there was afterwards apparently a falling off in the foreign trade of the port of Buenos Ayres compared with what it was before the war, there was in reality an increase in the quantities of the staple commodities of the country brought to market. This was encouraging, inasmuch as it is in proportion to the increase and multiplication of the native productions that we must look for the stability and improvement of this trade--the great difficulty being to collect returns for the importations from foreign countries. Hides and skins have been till lately the only articles of any importance obtainable, though it is manifest that the country is highly capable of producing a variety of other articles of great value in a commercial point of view.