to make the following tariffs, in Mexican silver, for passengers and merchandise:

PASSENGERS.

For each passenger per kilometer: First class, 4 cents; second class, 3 cents; third class, 2 cents.

Each passenger shall be permitted free baggage as follows: First class, 50 kilos; second class, 30 kilos; third class, 15 kilos.

The company shall not be obliged to accept less than 20 cents for any one passenger, regardless of the distance transported.

MERCHANDISE.

Per ton per kilometer: First class, 9 cents (silver); second class, 8 cents; third class, 7 cents; fourth class, 6 cents; fifth class, 5 cents; sixth class, 4 cents.

The tariff on coal, either foreign or domestic, shall not exceed 2 cents per ton per kilometer, and excess baggage and express shall be charged at the rate of 15 cents per ton per kilometer. In no case shall foreign merchandise enjoy a lower rate than that charged for domestic merchandise of a similar nature. Telegrams shall be charged for at the rate of 15 cents for 10 words, and a proportional charge shall be made for each additional word in excess of the first 10 words.

Storage shall be charged on merchandise not withdrawn from the railway warehouses within forty-eight hours after the receipt of the advice of its arrival, at the rate of 1 cent per day per 100 kilometers or fraction thereof for the first fifteen days, and 2 cents for each additional day in excess of the fifteen days already mentioned. Precious metals and valuable articles shall pay double the foregoing prices for each $200, or fraction thereof, of their value. In addition the company may make equitable charges for the receipt and delivery of merchandise at the warehouses.

The company may charge other railways for the use of its line 60 per cent of the regular freight and passenger tariffs on the freight and passengers transported.

As a guaranty of the faithful performance of the terms of the concession the concessionaires have deposited in the Mexican Treasury bonds of the consolidated public debt to the amount of $18,000.

AMENDED CUSTOM-HOUSE ORDINANCES.

(Continued.)

ART. 299. No custom-house document of any kind will be required when the purpose is to ship national or nationalized goods by steamers that are devoted exclusively to coasting traffic, but shippers must present to the commander of the custom-house guards a copy of the bill

of lading relating to the packages to which either the captain or the consignee of the steamer shall have affixed his signature or seal as a sign of his willingness to take the cargo on board. The commander or the employee to whom he may delegate his powers will, on the same document and above his signature, give permission to put the goods on board. The guard, who supervises the taking of the cargo on board, and to whom the document in question must be handed, will check, by means thereof, the marks and numbers of the packages presented for shipment, and will make a note of those that are not shipped as well as of the differences that he may observe; and when once the packages have been received on board he will send the document to the accounting department of the custom-house.

The copies of the bills of lading, referred to in the foregoing paragraph, must be presented with a 25-cent stamp, must be clearly written, and must contain the following particulars: The marks, numbers, and number of packages, the gross aggregate weight of each item, and the value of the goods of which said items consist.

The dues for loading and unloading, payable on merchandise in the coast wise trade, will be collected from the captains or consignees of the vessels.

ART. 300. Nothing but a copy of the bill of lading, in the same form as provided by the foregoing article, will be required when the purpose is to ship national goods in a sailing vessel or a craft propelled by gasoline or petroleum, but said document must be presented to the custom-house collector in order that he may indite therein the appointment of a competent inspector or employee to revise the goods and to engross upon the same document also, above his signature, the word "Revised." Without the fulfillment of this condition the custom-house guard will not permit the shipment.

When the object is to ship nationalized goods in said vessels, the shippers will present, in addition to the copy of the bill of lading, a request for permission to ship, in triplicate, as shown by model No. 37, which will contain the following particulars: The mark, number, and gross weight of each package; the designation, in generic terms, of the nature of the goods which the packages contain; the weight, dimensions, or number of the pieces, which must serve as the basis for the assessment of duties applicable to each class of goods; the tariff rate, and the total amount of duties. The custom-house collector will, on the original request, engross the appointment of an inspector, who will proceed to make an interior revision of the packages and who, after making that revision, will sign a statement to that effect both on the original and copy of the bill of lading presented by the interested party; also stating that he has found the goods to tally with the declaration made in the request. Without this requirement the customhouse guard will not permit the shipment of the packages.

The original of the request will be returned to the interested party, that he may present it to the custom-house of entry; the duplicate will form part of the ship's clearance papers, and the triplicate will remain on file in this custom-house.

The interested parties may avoid the revision of the packages in the custom-house of the port whither they are shipping them if, at the time of their revision at the custom-house of departure, they request that they be sealed, and if upon arrival at the point of destination the seals are found to be intact.

ART. 301. When a ship has done taking on its cargo for each port the captain or consignee will present to the custom-house two copies of the list or manifest of said cargo, also stating the following particulars: The name, class, and nationality of the vessel; its gross tonnage; the name of the captain or consignee; the marks, numbers, and number of packages composing each lot according to the several bills of lading; the gross weight and the value of each lot; the names of the shipper and consignee, and, in generic terms, a declaration of the goods.

If in the bills of lading there are stated various marks, numbers, and kinds of packages, the captains or consignees of the vessels may, to save trouble, mention in the manifests merely the total number of packages, but in such case they must attach to the manifest a copy of the bill of lading in question.

The manifests will be accepted by the custom-houses even though, in addition to the particulars required, they contain others which are of interest only to merchants and they will be compared with the bills of lading to which they refer. If the custom-house finds that they tally, the accounting department will inscribe on the manifest the note “confrontado" (compared), and the custom-house collector the note "despachado' (cleared), with the date. Of the two copies with these requirements, one will be handed to the captain or agent of the ship, and if the latter is a sailing vessel a copy of the request for permission to ship nationalized effects will be added. These documents in the aggregate prove the clearance of the ship, and the captain or consignee receiving them must give the custom-house a receipt therefor, and keep them carefully in his possession in order to deliver them to the custom-house of the port to which the goods are consigned.

If, when the copies of the manifest are compared with the several bills of lading in the accounting department, a discrepancy is discovered, note will be taken thereof on the document itself; and only in the event of its being impossible, owing to the nature of the discrepancies, to make such note on the document, will the latter be returned to the interested party to be replaced.

ART. 302. If, upon arrival at the port of destination, the captain or consignee of the vessel shall fail to present at the custom-house the

clearance papers mentioned in the foregoing article, the custom-house will request from the custom-house of the port whence the vessel departed a copy of the respective manifest in order that the unloading of the goods may be effected in accordance therewith. Said unloading can not be permitted until the required document arrives, but the captain or the consignee may remedy the omission, if, in making their petition to the custom-house, they present a copy of the manifest, at the same time giving a bond which is satisfactory to the custom-house collector and of which the amount will suffice to make good any irregularities that may transpire in the unloading of the goods. When fiscal interests have thus been protected and subject to the collation of the copy of the manifest presented by the captain with the copy to be sent by the custom-house of the port whence the goods departed, the unloading thereof may be permitted.

A captain who, upon arrival at the port of destination and at the time when the official visit to the vessel is made, fails to present the clearance papers which he ought to have brought with him, will be liable to a fine not exceeding $50; but the custom-house collector is empowered to condone the fine in case it be proved that the lack of said papers was due to causes of force majeure.

ART. 303. Every ship that departs from any port destined for other ports for which it is carrying merchandise of the kind in question must be provided with a set of clearance papers for each port whither the goods are destined. Said papers will consist of a copy of the manifest legalized by the custom-house and, if the vessel is a sailing vessel, there will be added the copies of the permits for the shipment of the nationalized effects which it has on board. If, at the port of departure the ship takes on no cargo for the next port of call, the custom-house will extend to it a simple certificate to that effect.

ART. 304. The register of departure of a coasting vessel, which must remain in the custom-house files, will consist of the application for permission to take the cargo on board; copies of the permits for the shipment of nationalized merchandise, referred to in article 299; copies of the bills of lading presented by the shippers; copies of the manifest, with notes as to the day and hour when the ship was cleared; the receipt for the clearance papers extended by the captain or consignee of the vessel, and a statement by them of packages not shipped. The numeration of the registers in question will be correlative and will begin anew each fiscal year.

ART. 305. The custom-houses will draw up and forward to the Custom-House Bureau in the first five days of each month a list of the vessels which entered the port during the previous month, and another of the vessels cleared in the coastwise traffic. These statements must contain, according to the circumstances of each case, the following particulars: The date of entry or departure of the vessel; the name and

class of the vessel; the port from which it came or for which it is bound; the number of packages which it may have brought from the port whence it sailed and the number of packages which it may have on board for each of the ports for which it procured clearance papers; the aggregate weight and value of the cargo. The statements in regard to the coastwise traffic that is carried in foreign bottoms will be drawn up apart from the others.

ART. 306. Only owing to circumstances of force majeure may ships when engaged in the coastwise traffic put in at ports other than those in their itinerary.

In such cases, if the vessel puts in in distress at one of the ports of the Republic, its captain will procure from any of the local authorities a certificate setting forth the reason of his putting in, and if the vessel puts in at a foreign port, the certificate must be procured from the Mexican Consul residing there, or, in default thereof, from the customhouse collector, or from one of the local authorities. If the vessel's captain fails to comply with this requirement, the collector of the custom-house at the first port at which the vessel arrives, after having put in at another in distress, will, after investigating the case, impose upon him a fine not exceeding $50, if from the investigation it appears that the omission was due to negligence on the part of the captain; but if it is found that the omission was malicious, the fine to be imposed will be from $50 to $500.

ART. 307. When a coasting ship arrives at a port, and as soon as the sanitary visit has been paid to it and it has been admitted to pratique, the commandant of the custom-house guards, or the employee representing him, will go on board and will receive from the captain the lists of the passengers, baggage, and explosives that the ship has on board, as well as the clearance papers received from the customhouse of the port whence the vessel sailed. As soon as the commandant of the custom-house guards receives said documents and the captain binds himself to present a petition for permission to unload within the period of time fixed by the commandant, the latter may permit the unloading to begin.

If, owing to any circumstance, the commandant does not see fit to permit said unloading at once, he will order the hatches of the ship to be sealed or will station on board one or more guards with instructions not to permit any other operations than the landing of passengers and their baggage, which may on no account be delayed.

Immediately on his return from the visit paid to the ship after its arrival, the commandant of the custom-house guards will present to the custom-house collector the papers received from the captain, after having previously made a note on the manifest of the day and hour at which the vessel entered port and the hour at which the papers were handed to him. If, when paying the visit, the commandant