Price : American Port Towns	139

distinguish between limited and general merchants, merchants who
dealt with only one geographic area or commodity group and
merchants who dealt with all areas and in all goods significant for
the economies of their home regions. In America this distinction
separated the smaller merchants who dealt only with the West
Indies from their bigger confreres who traded to Europe.

This hierarchy of traders created a hierarchy of trading towns.
Primary traders tended to scatter across the countryside where they
would be accessible to their agricultural customers. Secondary
traders, however, tended to congregate along main trading routes
in places convenient for their customers, the primary traders, and
with easy access to the major ports. Except for a few spots such as
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the seats of these secondary traders were
almost entirely in riverine and coastal ports. While any hamlet or
country crossroad or public warehouse in the Chesapeake might
do for the site of the "store" of a primary trader, secondary traders
tended to be found in towns and townlets of 1,500-4,000 popula-
tion, which as ports and county seats often attracted more traffic
than their modest size would suggest. Merchants properly so called
tended to congregate in coastal or river ports which could handle
ocean-going vessels, had easy access to the full variety of goods
needed for their export trades, and were convenient to markets for
their imported goods.28

Even so, not all the ports where mercantile activity took place\
perform^ the siar1""* fi-inr^rmc (i) Sr.m? -n».rf. mere shipping points,
Is were loaded and nnlnarleH. irhilr nrhrn ivrif1 f

cessinc; centers where goods received some manufacture in transit.
(2) Some merely received ships s*rtt tr>

ping centers and markets where ships could he bnilf. ™i
paired, and bought, sold, or chartered, and sailors hired. (3)

some^were only limited marts, where only the most restricted range
oTgbods could be bought -inH^nlH, others were more general marts
where a g;reat variety of goods (by no means all of local produce)

28. For a related but different analytical system by a geographer, see James T. Lemon,
"Urbanization and the Development of Eighteenth-Century Southeastern Pennsylvania
and Adjacent Delaware," William and Mary Quarterly, 36. ser., 24 (1967), 501-542.