This has been rapidly increasing during the last twelve years.  In 1850, a mason or carpenter received five piastres or 10_d._ a day, while a common labourer obtained 6_d._ Now the former finds no difficulty in earning 2_s._ per diem, while the latter receives 1_s._ 4_d._ for short days, and 1_s._ 6_d._ for long days.  The shorthandedness consequent upon the Christian rising, has of course contributed to this rise in wages; but the province was at no time self-supporting in this respect.  A large number of scutors or labourers from Dalmatia cross the frontier in the spring, and hire themselves out during the summer months.  The decrease in the number of these was, I am told, very perceptible during the Italian war, in consequence of the demand for recruits.

The other products of the country are wool, hides, skins, honey, and wax, which are exported to Austria.  Large numbers of sheep and horned cattle are, moreover, annually exported to the Dalmatian markets.

The only manufactures of which I could find specimens were coarse woollen blankets, twist, and carpets.  The blankets and carpets are mostly exported to Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Servia.  Besides these, a kind of cotton cloth is made in the houses by the women, from imported cotton, and is applied solely to domestic uses, and is not regarded as an article of commerce.

In considering the question of the trade of the Herzegovina, the attention should be directed, not so much to what it actually is, as to what it might be under the fostering care of an enlightened government.  And yet, it is not to the producing and consuming capabilities of the province itself that its possible importance in a commercial point of view is attributable, but rather to its position on the confines of the East and West, and to the fact of its containing within its limits the natural outlets for the trade of that portion of the Ottoman empire.

It is, in fact, in its relation to Bosnia, that it is entitled to most attention; and if we deplore that such natural resources as it possesses have not been more fully developed, we have still greater reason to lament that the world is thus debarred communication with the most romantic and beautiful province of European Turkey.  It is also the natural route for the commerce of a portion of Servia, whose exports and imports would thus quickly pass to and from the sea.  Its value, however, appears never to have been properly appreciated by the Turkish government, and Omer Pacha, in 1852, was the first employe of that power who ever appreciated its importance in a commercial point of view.  He appears to have indicated the measures necessary for developing its resources, and for attracting the trade of the neighbouring provinces from their expensive and indirect channel into their legitimate route.  The prospects of the province were rapidly brightening under his sagacious administration, when Austria took alarm, and effectually impeded all farther