EXPENSIVE MAIL.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19481, 30 November 1928, Page 5

EXPENSIVE MAIL.

LOS ANGELES TO NEW ZEALAND. [THE PBESS Special Service.] AUCKLAND, November 29. What must be the most expensive mail matter ever brought to New Zealand was delivered to the postal authorities at Auckland, when the steamer Golden Cloud arrived from Los Angeles. The vessel brought two bags of letters and for their carriage across the Pacific Ocean the owners, the Oceanic and Oriental Navigation Company, receive £2866 from the American Government, or £1433 a bag. The Golden Cloud is the second of the company's steamers to deliver mail, from Los. Angeles at Auckland under the new contract entered into with the American Government last September. The subsidy is at the rate of 10b a nautical mile, and the contract seems to be proving very expensive, for toward the end of last month thfc Golden Bear brought only 67 bags of mail to Auckland from Los Angeles. These were delivered at a cost of about £43 a bag. Cargo steam,ers between America and New Zealand always carry mail if required, but' at a, poundage rate according; totlie weight of the mail. Had the two bags brought by the Golden* Cloud yesterday been carried on this basis the total cost would have been only a few shillings.