the character of their coasts co-operated to reduce the
disposition to employ coasters in war. From the Chesapeake to Sandy
Hook the shore-line sweeps out to sea, is safely approachable by
hostile navigators, and has for refuge no harbors of consequence,
except the Delaware. The local needs of the little communities along
the beaches might foster a creeping stream of very small craft, for
local supply; but as a highway, for intercourse on a large scale, the
sea here was too exposed for use, when taken in connection with the
facility for transport by land, which was not only short but with
comparatively good roads.

In war, as in other troublous times, prices are subject to complicated
causes of fluctuation, not always separable. Two great staples, flour
and sugar, however, may be taken to indicate with some certainty the
effects of impeded water transport. From a table of prices current, of
August, 1813, it appears that at Baltimore, in the centre of the wheat
export, flour was $6.00 per barrel; in Philadelphia, $7.50; in New
York, $8.50; in Boston, $11.87. At Richmond, equally well placed with
Baltimore as regarded supplies, but with inferior communications for
disposing of its surplus, the price was $4.00. Removing from the grain
centre in the other direction, flour at Charleston is reported at
$8.00--about the same as New York; at Wilmington, North Carolina,
$10.25. Not impossibly, river transportation had in these last some
cheapening effect, not readily ascertainable now. In sugar, the scale
is seen to ascend in an inverse direction. At Boston, unblockaded, it
is quoted at $18.75 the hundredweight, itself not a low rate; at New
York, blockaded, $21.50; at Philadelphia, with a longer journey,
$22.50; at Baltimore, $26.50; at Savannah, $20. In the last named
place, nearness to the Florida line, with the inland navigation,
favored smuggling and safe transportation. The price at New Orleans, a
sugar-producing district, $9.00, affords a standard by which to
measure the cost of carriage at that time. Flour in the same city, on
February 1, 1813, was $25 the barrel.

In both articles the jump between Boston and New York suggests
forcibly the harassment of the coasting trade. It manifests either
diminution of supply, or the effect of more expensive conveyance by
land; possibly both. The case of the southern seaboard cities was
similar to that of Boston; for it will not be overlooked that, as the
more important food produc