In the seaports most of the loading and unloading is done by lighters, the wharves generally being small affairs. Only in Puerto Plata (where extensive harbor improvements are now under way), Macoris and Santo Domingo can larger vessels approach the wharves. All the wharves were built under concessions from the government, which, in the impossibility to provide them itself on account of its perpetual lack of funds, was obliged to procure their construction by granting the right to collect a specified wharf tax, more or less onerous, for a period of years. The Santo Domingo City wharf concession provided that everything exported from and imported into this city or any other coast point in the province must pay the tax, whether the wharf was used or not. The Samana wharf concession; as amended, gave the right to collect certain high wharf taxes for fifty years, from 1875 to 1925, in return for the building of a diminutive dock. One of the important objects accomplished through the 1907 bond issue was the redemption by the government of the monopolistic wharf concessions. A peculiar feature of the country's domestic trade is that almost fifty per cent of it is in the hands of Syrians. These people are found in a number of the West India Islands, but nowhere have they gained such a foothold as in Santo Domingo. They appeared in the nineties, and for a number of years confined their activities to peddling goods about the country, both men and women traveling around with great bundles of merchandise which they spread out wherever they met prospective purchasers. Their next step was to establish retail stores and crowd the native Dominican storekeeper out, and of late years they have opened large business houses. They are not regarded as a desirable element, as they do not amalgamate or mingle with the Dominican population, but seem possessed of the single idea to make a fortune and return with it to their country. Such part of the retail trade as is not controlled by Syrians, is mostly in the hands of Dominicans. The stores are generally small, with a limited stock of goods; they have no show-windows, but are arranged on the style of bazars. Fixed prices are rare and most sales become negotiations with the polite shopkeeper. In the country it is customary for the storekeeper to make advances of merchandise to the smaller farmers until crop time; they then pay him in cacao, coffee, tobacco or other farm products, which he remits to the seaport to the wholesale merchant with whom he deals.