The Government then determined to export the bark which remained in store on its own account, paying the same price as had been agreed on by the company. These two companies lasted for two years, during which time the Bolivian forests yielded 3,000,000 lbs. of bark. Such was the result of the high prices which followed the fall of the Pinto monopoly; but it was the rich contractors, and not the poor bark-collectors, who derived benefit from the change.[77] In 1851 Government prohibited the cutting of bark entirely, from the 1st of January, 1852, to the 1st of January, 1854.[78] In 1858 a decree was issued to regulate the transition of the system of monopoly to that of free-trade in bark, which caused an improvement in the prices in European markets; and in November, 1859, Dr. Linares, then President of Bolivia, declared the right to cut bark in the forests to be free, and reduced the duty 25 per cent. on the current prices, to be fixed at the beginning of each year.[79] This is the law which now regulates the bark trade in Bolivia, and, after a course of short-sighted meddling legislation, extending over twenty years, in 1850 it still brought 142,000 dollars annually into the public treasury, being a fifteenth part of the whole revenue of the Republic. For exportation the bark is wrapped in fresh bullock-hides, having been previously sewn up in thick cotton bags containing 155 lbs. each. These hide packages are called _serons_, a mule-load being 285 lbs., and the transport to the coast costing about ten dollars for each mule-load.