STATISTICS OF TRADE AND COMMERCE.

I. SANDWICH ISLANDS AND JAPAN. II. BOSTON IMPORTS FROM LIBERIA. III. THE ICE TRADE. IV. FAILURES IN THE LEATHER TRADE. V. THE SUGAR PINES OF THE SIERRAS. VI. BANKA STRAIT. VII. TRADE WITH THIBET. VIII. THE AMERICAN WAR AND GERMAN COMMERCE. IX. DECLINE OF SALMON. X. CURIOUS JAPANESE DOCUMENTS. XI. FRANCE AND AMERICA. XII. SCOTTISH COMMERCE. XIII. TRADE OF KURRACHEE, XIV. TRADE WITH TURKEY. XV. TRADE AND PRODUCTS OF SIAM. XVI. NEW FRENCH TREATY. XVII. FRENCH TREATY WITH TURKEY. XVIII. MEXICAN COAST TRADE. XIX. FRENCH WINES. XX. PERSIAN COTTON, XXI. SUGAR AND COFFEE TRADE.

SANDWICH ISLANDS AND JAPAN.

THE steamer SURPRISE sailed from Honolulu June 16th, for Kanagawa, Japan, having touched there to take on board a fresh supply of coal. She is apparently a frail boat, entirely unfit for a sea voyage, and could not, probably, survive any severe storm. Yet, as she came from NewYork around Cape Horn, she may reach her destination in safety. From Kanagawa she will cross over the Yellow Sea to Shanghai, where she is to be employed as a passenger and freight boat on the Yang-tse-Kiang River. Should she arrive there safely she will, no doubt, prove a handsome speculation to her owners, for she is most admirably adapted to the navigation of a large river like that, and will outsail anything that ever was floated there before her. Still, few could be induced to make a voyage across the Pacific in her, and, as a gentleman remarked, "none but a Yankee would ever attempt it."

BOSTON IMPORTS FROM LIBERIA.

The bark JUSTICE STORY has arrived from Monrovia, Africa, with palm oil, camwood, ivory, sugar, molasses, &c. This vessel took out the young man, LEO L. LLOYD, to Monrovia, some eight months since, with a large supply of goods from Boston merchants, who were interested in his success. She already makes handsome returns in African produce, and thus extends our commercial intercourse with that country, which we hope may be largely increased.

We understand that these African sugars and syrups are more valuable to the manufacturer, as they contain the full native strength of the article, the producers not having yet learned all the arts of adulteration of their more civilized competitors in the West Indies. We commend them to the attention of our dealers and manufacturers here, and trust the prices realized for them may lead to further shipments.

THE ICE TRADE.

The exports of ice this year from Boston, up to Aug. 1st, amounted to 74,065 tons, against 97,883 tons in same period last year. The Philadelphia Journal says the present price of ice in that city is 55 cents for 56 pounds per week, against 40 cents last year. The excuse of the ice companies

is, that there was almost a total failure in the home crop this last winter. Honolulu is again to be supplied with ice by the agent of the Sitka Ice Company, who will supply the article from Sitka, Russian-America. The schooner EMMA, on her recent trip from San Francisco to Mazatlan, took on board sixty tons of ice, shipped by the Russian-American Ice Company to Mazatlan, where they have an agency established for its sale. The supply of ice at Richmond, Va., is very limited. The ordinary use is stopped, that enough may remain for sickness and extraordinary occasions.

THE FAILURES IN THE LEATHER TRADE.

Mr. Commissioner PERRY, of the Liverpool Bankruptcy Court, gave a judgment in the case of Mr. THOMAS BARTON, a tanner and fellmonger, who was brought down in the great crash in the leather trade, his liabilities amounting to about £200,000. His Honor strongly denounced the reckless trading of the bankrupt-his extensive borrowing of capital at ruinous rates of interest-and his bill transactions with LAURENCE, MORTIMORE & Co.; (the acceptance and renewals he gave to that firm during three years exceeding £600,000;) and intimated that the certificate must be wholly refused and protection withheld. Notice of appeal was given on behalf of the bankrupt.

THE SUGAR PINES OF THE SIERRAS.

We were very tired when we dismounted at CLARKE's log hut and canvass dining tent in the glorious forest, thirty miles from Mariposatired in body and in brain; tired by our seven hours of horseback riding, and by the perpetual feast of floral beauty and sugar-pine magnificence which had delighted eye and heart. But it did not require a long time to restore us. Half an hour's rest under one of the stately firs that towered above the cabin, and a cup of tea with our noon meal, fit for a mandarin, put us in good working trim for the afternoon's excursion. We were only five miles from the mammoth trees. An easy upland ride of an hour would lead us to the grove where the vegetable Titans we had so often read about, with a wonder tinged with unbelief, held their solemn court.

And I confess that I began to doubt, as the time for mounting again approached, as to the existence of the marvels. Was it possible that before sunset I was to stand by a living tree more than ninety feet in circuit, and over three hundred feet high? Think what these figures mean, my hasty reader, when transformed into solid bark and fiber. Take a ball of cord, measure off a hundred feet from it, cut it and tie the ends, and then, by the aid of four or five of your companions, stretch it into a circle, (if you have a parlor spacious enough to permit the experiment,) and imagine that space filled with a column of a vigorous cedar. Now conceive this tree rooted on the common near the entrance. What do you say to the idea of looking up its smooth trunk to a point higher than the topmost leaf of any elm on the Tremont-street mall, and of seeing there a bough thicker than the largest of those elms shooting out from it? What do you say to the fact that its plumes would nod a hundred feet above the vane at Park-street spire? What say you to the

possibility, if it lay hollow on the ground, of driving a barouche and four through it without their being able to touch the highest point of its curved ceiling "with a ten-foot pole?" Then think of it cut up into six thousand cords of wood.

The Mariposa grove stands as the Creator has fashioned it, unprofaned, except by fire, which, long before the advent of Saxon white men, had charred the base of the larger portion of the stalwart trees. We rode on for an hour, climbing all the time, till we reached a forest plateau, five thousand feet above the sea. This, in New-England, is the height of Mount Washington, where not a scrub can grow. Riding on a few rods, through ordinary evergreens with dark stems, we at last catch a glimpse of a strange color in the forest. It is a tree in the distance, of a light cinnamon hue. We ride nearer and nearer, seeing others of the same complexion starting out in the most impressive contrast with the sombre columns of the wilderness. We are now in the grove of the Titans. We single out one of them for a first acquaintance, and soon dismount at its roots. I must confess that my own feelings, as I first scanned it, and let them roam up its tawny pillar, was of intense disappointment. But then I said to myself, this is doubtless one of the striplings of the Anak blood-only a small affair of some forty feet in girth. I took out the measuring line, fastened it to the trunk with a knife, and walked around, unwinding as I went. The line was seventy feet long. I came to the end of the line before completing the circuit. Nine feet more were needed. I had dismounted before a structure eighty-four feet high, and should not have guessed that would measure more than fifteen feet through. It did not look to me twice as large as the Big Elm on the Common, although that is only eighteen feet in circumference, and this was twenty-eight feet in diameter. During the day I had seen a dozen sugar pines which appeared to be far more lofty. The next one we measured was eighty-nine feet and two inches in girth; the third was ninety feet. There are nearly three times as many of the giant species in this grove as in the Calaveras cluster. Divided into two groups there are six hundred and fifty of them within a space of one mile and three-quarters. Colonel WARREN, the faithful and self-sacrificing friend of agricultural interests in this State, proprietor and editor of the California Farmer, measured the principal trees of one group on this ridge, some three years ago, and found one of 102 feet, two of 100 feet, one of 97 feet, one of 92 feet, one of 82 feet, one of 80 feet, two of 77 feet, three of 76 feet, and thus gradually diminishing, till more than a hundred trees were on his list that measured fifty feet and upwards in circumference. This crowd of majestic forms explains the disappointment in first entering the grove. The general scale is too immense. Half a dozen of the largest trees spread half a mile apart, and properly set off by trees of six or eight feet in girth, would shake the most volatile mind with

awe.

Four days afterwards, on the homeward path by another trail, I struck off the track with one of our party to see some "big trees" that were reported to us as a mile from the path, near CRANE'S Flat. We found them. The first one we approached was the only one of the species in the range of vision, and reared its snuff-colored columns among some ordinary firs. How majestic it swelled and towered! My companion and I both exclaimed: "This is the largest tree we have yet seen; this

will measure more than a hundred feet." We gazed for a long time at its soaring stem, from which, a hundred feet above us, the branches that shot out bent suddenly upwards, like pictures of golden candlesticks in the Hebrew temple. It seemed profane to put a measuring tape upon such a piece of organized sublimity. But we wanted to know how much more than a hundred feet could be claimed for it, and I made the trial. It was just fifty-six feet in circuit, but little more than half the size of the monarchs in Mariposa, which it seemed to excel so much in majesty. There were a hundred trees in the Mariposa grove larger than this, and all of them together did not make half the impression on me that this one stamped into the brain at first sight.-From a California Letter in the Boston Transcript.

BANKA STRAIT.

It is estimated that upwards of 1,000,000 tons of British shipping pass annually through Banka Strait, the new channel lately discovered by Mr. W. STANTON, master and commander of her Majesty's surveying vessel SARACEN, in going to and returning from China. The Straits Times, in commenting on these facts, says: "The saving, therefore, effected in demurrage by the new route, to say nothing of the less chance of wrecks and other casualties, is almost beyond computation. Banka Strait has hitherto had a very unenviable reputation on account of the great number of accidents constantly occurring in the course of the dangerous and intricate passage. In the last expedition to China the majority of the men-of-war passing through got ashore, and some of them ran a very narrow escape of total loss. Her Majesty' ship TRANSIT, with troops, was entirely wrecked, but since the publication of the present chart not one vessel, adopting the new route, has got ashore. On the other hand, the passage of the Lucipara Channel is fast becoming impracticable to large ships, as the officers of the SARACEN found, in the course of their examination, that it was fast filling up."

TRADE WITH THIBET.

Mr. J. D. HOOKER writes to the Times: India, it is believed, will eventually become the greatest tea-producing country in the world. Central Asia, from Thibet to Siberia, inclusive, is the largest tea-consuming area in the world, but it does not produce a leaf of tea. Sixty miles only intervene between Thibet and the British tea plantations in Sikkim, but all the tea consumed in Thibet comes from China, 1,000 miles to the eastward, and over numerous chains of lofty mountains. The Russians are as great tea-consumers as the Asiatics, and they are rapidly pushing their outposts southward and eastward, towards the Himalaya; but neither does Russia contain in all her vast dominions one acre of tea-producing land. The Thibetans are, further, most eager to procure broadcloths, cutlery and a great variety of English wares and Bengal produce; for which they barter shawl wool, salt, borax, musk, flour, gold dust, amber, turquoises, copper, sheep, and ponies of a breed which is invaluable both in the plains and hills of India. With regard to the alleged difficulties of the passes, it is enough to state that every bit of wood used in house

building in Thibet goes across the Himalaya, and that in one day I have counted several hundreds of yaks, mules, ponies, sheep, goats, dogs, men, women and children crossing a pass upwards of 18,300 feet high; every biped and quadruped loaded, according to its powers, with planks of wood, rice, millet, Indian corn, sugar, tobacco, spices, bamboos, rattans, cotton and silk stuffs, and numberless other products of the Himalaya valleys, to be bartered for brick, tea, Chinese crockery and the articles I have enumerated above. Again, no circumstance that came under my observation in India so surprised me as the fact that upwards of 1,000 continuous miles of British frontier were closed to British trade and enterprise; a frontier, too, that divided countries more diverse as to their physical characters, their natural products, and consequently as to their several wants, than any other two on the face of the globe. I have never ceased to urge, when opportunity offered, both in India and England, the importance of opening up this frontier by a route through Sikkim, believing, as I do, that the trade in tea between India and Thibet will eventually do more to benefit the latter country than, perhaps, any other whatever.

THE AMERICAN WAR AND GERMAN COMMERCE.

The present unfortunate state of political affairs in America does not yet appear to have had any effect on the transatlantic trade of the Elbe, which, in all respects, still occupies the high position which it has long maintained. Of this good evidence is given in the official returns of arrivals and departures at the neighboring city of Hamburg during the first seven months of this and the two preceding years, from which the following is an abstract:

With regard to the arrivals from America it will be seen that there has this year been an increase over those of both of the other years; but as to the departures, a small falling off, as compared with those of last year, is beginning to be perceptible, though that is not to be wondered at; for, in the present condition of the States, a check has naturally been given to emigration, which could not fail to have some influence on ship-owners, who have been accustomed, to some extent, to rely on what they receive from passengers as a means of enabling them to meet the expenses of the outward voyage.

As far as the local trade of Hamburg is concerned, that, according to the financial returns of this year, as compared with the same period of last, is in all points of view satisfactory.-Altona (August 3) Correspondence of the London Post.