to send on vessels attempting to run the blockade, first, arms and ammunition; second, clothing, boots, shoes, and hats; third, drugs and chemicals that were most needed, such as quinine, chloroform, ether, opium, morphine, and rhubarb. These agents were instructed to see that all vessels leaving for southern ports were laden with the articles named. Such part of the cargoes as was not taken by the government was sold at auction to the highest bidder. These blockade auction sales were attended by merchants from the inland towns, whose shelves were almost bare of goods during three years of the war.[486] For two years military and naval supplies were the most important articles brought into the southern ports. The Alabama troops were in great need of all kinds of war equipment, and the state administration made every effort to obtain military supplies from abroad. Shipments of arms from Europe were made to the West Indies, generally to Cuba, and thence smuggled into Mobile and other Gulf ports. The shipments were always long delayed while waiting for a favorable opportunity to attempt a run. A large proportion of the blockade-runners making for Mobile were captured by the United States vessels.[487] Dark nights, and rainy, stormy weather furnished the opportunity to the runners to slip into or out of a port. Once at sea, nothing could catch them, since they were built for fast sailing rather than for capacity to carry freight.[488] Most of the arms secured by Alabama came by way of Cuba, as did nearly all the supplies that entered the port of Mobile or were smuggled in on boats along the coast. Havanna was 590 miles from Mobile, and between these ports most of the blockade trade of the Gulf Coast was carried on. One shipment, welcomed by the state authorities, was a lot of condemned Spanish flint-lock muskets, which were remodelled and repaired and placed in the hands of the state troops. Machinery for the naval foundry and arsenal at Selma and for the navy-yard on the Tombigbee was brought through the blockade from England _via_ the West Indies. The Confederate government, besides taking its own half of each cargo, had the first choice of all other goods brought through the blockade and usually chose shoes, clothing, and medicine. The state could only make contracts for the importation of supplies; it could not import them on its own vessels. The Confederate government paid high prices for goods, but, on the whole, paid much less than did the private individual for the remainder of the cargo when sold at auction. The merchants made large profits on the few articles of merchandise secured by them. Speculators bought up lots of merchandise at Mobile and carried them far inland, to the small towns and villages of the Black Belt and farther north, and secured fabulous prices in Confederate money for ordinary calico, shoes, women's apparel, etc. The central part of the state was more completely shut from the outside world