The Opelousas patriot. [volume] (Opelousas, Parish of St. Landry, La.) 1855-1863, 1856-03-08
Gbe patriot !:
sundry Smuggling Contrivances.

the pride of fashion, there was a shoemaker il
London who nude a fortune by the sale of til,
best Paris boots at a price which oil his fellow
tradesmen declared %ruinous. He undersold thu
trade and obtained troops Of customers. Thest
boots must be stolen, said his rivals; but there
was no evidence that they were ; certainly they
were not Struggled boots, for any one coulG
satisfy himself that the full duty was paid annr
them at the Custom House. The sheer
retired from the business with d fortune.
forwards his secret was accidentally disco
although he had paid duty for the
he had not paid for every thing tina
in them. There was a heavy duty
bic on foreign watches and every DO
signed to him from Paris had contained
high heel q cavity exactly large enough to.
a watch. The great profits obtained by
trade in smuggled watches made it possible Il
this tradesman,' when he had filed up theii
heels, to sell bis boots under prime cost. This
was worth while, again, because, Of course, BY
the extension Of his boot-trade, he increased hi:
power of importing watches duty free.
Some years later, an elderly lady and d lar
dog Travelled q good deal between Dover and
Ostend. It came to be generally considered
at the Custom-house that her travels were fol
the purpose Of smuggling Brussels lace, thel
subject to exceedingly high duty ; but neither
the examiners of her luggage, nor the female
searchers at the Custom-house, who took charge
Of her person, could, by the narrowest scrutiny
find matter for a single accusation. At last
when she was about to decline the smuggling
business, this lady accepted a bride from .
Custom-house officer to make him master Of
her secret. Calling to her side the the lapdog
who was to all strangers a very snappish little
cur, she asked the officer to fetch a knife and
rip the little creature open. Like a few of II
dogs (Which have sometimes even proved to
rats sold in the streets of London, it glo'
outwardly in q false skin and between
false skin and the true skin was space G,
to provide a thin cur with the comforta'
ness proper to o lady's pet, by mean
warm padding of the finest lace. In the
of Louis the Eighteenth may be nott
the way-very fierce dogs were trained toe
valuable watches and small articles under
skins across the frontier. They were taught
to know and avoid the uniform of o Custom
house officer. Swift, cunning and fierce, they
were never to be taken alive. although They
were sometimes pursued and shot.
Not YER. long ago, a great number of false
huhh uotCs was pun utU GlTCuluLlDH Mlluln Tilt
dominions of the Gar. They could only have
been imported but although the ~strictest
search was made habitually over every vesseI
entering a Russian port, no smuggling Of false
notes was discovered. So strict is meant to be
the scrutiny at Russian C~ustom-house, thai
the ship captain, who is bound to give On in.
v%entory of every article on board, may fall into
unhcard-or trouble if he forget so much as his
own private canary bird. There was an Eng.
fish captain once at Cronstadt who, by acct
dent, forgot to enter a fine turtle upon his list,
He told the leading Custom-house official plain.
ly and honestly of his unfortunate omission. and
the functionary, who was q good-natured man,
saw no plain way out Of the difficulty. He
recommended that the matter should be CLOSED
over by assuming that the turtle was intended
for the Emperor. The captain did, therefore,
declare that, il he had not entered the turtle, ii
had been brought expressly as an English.
mans gift to the Car, and to the Gar the
turtle was dispatched accordingly. Soon after
wards there arrived q government messenger
inquiring for this most courteous of captains,
who brought tho gracious thanks of the Gar
Nicholas, together with the gift Of a gold snuff
box, embellished with the autocratic cipher set
in diamonds. Instead of fine and persecution,
there were gifts and honors for this lucky
sailor. But when afterwards, some other
trading captains, acting as they imagined cum
ningly upon the hint, brought turtles to ex-
change for ~snuifboyes, his astutc majesty
quietly made the turtles into soup, but declined
by any act of exchange to add snuf-boxes to
the articles of Russian trade shipped OF the
port Of Cronstadt.
Now to go back to the forged notes. Acct
dent brought also that mystery to light. Sew
eral cases of ~lead-penciis arrived one day from
England, and were being examined, when one
of them fell out from a package, and the
custom-house officer, picking it up, cut it to a
point, and used it to a sign the order which
delivered up the cases to the consignee. lie
kept the one loose pencil for his own use, and
a few days afterwards, because it needed a
fresh point, cut it again, and found that there
was no more lead. Another chip into the cedar
brought him to a roll of paper nestled in a
hollow place. This paper was one of the false
notes, engraved in London, and thus passed
into the dominions Of the Muscoyite.
During the last epidemic fever which dis
played itself IN this country as II rage for
antique furniture, much Of this was imported
from the Netherlands. \ shrewd Dutch
tradesman very much preferred an order for
sofas and chairs to an order for sidehoards or
tables. Horse hair, he knew, was plentiful
enough in England the duty upon tea. how
,,os oSnpez;-n . ,,,l II, -