The Globe. FRIDAY, AUGUST 14, 1874.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 64, 14 August 1874, Page 2

The Globe. FRIDAY, AUGUST 14, 1874.

The Mail Service has broken down. The Premier yesterday received telegrams slating that Mr Forbes found it impossible to carry out his contract. It is quite out of the question that Mr Hall can continue running the steamers employed, for any length of time; he has had one experience of trying to carry out a mail service to San Francisco, and it is not likely that he will care to try another, judging from the fate that attended his last efforts. We suppose New Zealand will be again a sufferer, and that it will be impossible to enforce any penalties that may be due for the nondelivery of mails at their specified time. The line seems fataljto contractors, and to the boats that are employed on it. In the short time the service has been running, an unusually large number of casualties have occurred, and two of the steamers employed have very narrowly escaped destruction; the Macgregor having been for some days in a most perilous position-, on a reef at the entrance to the harbor at Kandavau,

and the Tartar having been ashore for some considerable time on a reef to the northward of the line.

To any one who has watched the career of the Californian mail service, it must have been evident that the collapse must come, sooner or later. The boats, though good enough of their kind, were not the class of passenger vessels which those people who could afford to take a trip home by sea were expecting, and though it was stated that they were only employed temporarily, yet every one of their trips helped to add to the bad name that the service was daily earning. The numerous delays in the delivery of the mails, which were invariably followed by an explanation to the effect that the delay had taken place between England and America, or in the transit of the mails across the American Continent, made people doubtful of the ability of the company to deliver their letters in any reasonable time, and the public naturally asked why these delays should happen in the passage from England to America, between which places steam communication is as regular and punctual as it can possibly be. The fact is, that the service has always been started before the contractors were ready. There has been such a desire in high places, to have a. New Zealand and San Francisco service, and to be utterly independent of the P. and O. Company and the service from Melbourne, that the unfortunate colony has had to put up with whatever vessels the contractors could obtain, some of them commanded by gentlemen, whose abilities as seamen no one ever questioned, but who had not been in the habit of commanding oceangoing passenger ships. The state of some of these stealers on their arrival and departure from Lyttelton, was disgraceful, dirty to a degree, with no convenience for cabin passengers, and with servants employed, who seemed to makeita business to snub any enquiring passenger in every possible way. "With a pretty good experience of passenger steamers and mail boats in most parts of the world, we must say that for general discomfort, dirt, and incivility, some of the steamers of the Californian mail service seem to us unequalled by those of any other company that fly the English flag. Of course some boats were much better than others, and on some of them we believe life was bearable, but even the best of them could bear no comparison with the steamers of the P. and O. line. It is to be hoped, that in future contracts that may be made for the carriage of our mails from New Zealand to San Francisco, the passenger element may be well considered, and that the class of boats stipulated for may not be cargo boats merely, or if thoy are, that the contracting company shall be compelled to make such alterations in them, before they start on their first trip, as shall render them comfortable to the passengers who have to travel by them.