THE PANAMA ROUTE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 276, 7 November 1862, Page 5

THE PANAMA ROUTE.

(From the Sydney Empire, October 1.) When the Government of Great Britain, legislating, as thi»y considered, wisely for the Australian colonies, delegated to them the power of constitutional government, giving them among other rights, the sole control of their own exchequer, the boon was certainly not conferred with the view that the mother country should derive any advantage from the act, save what znight arise in a political sense; and confident are we that the colonists of New South Wales, of Anglo-Saxon extraction, and possessed of liberal institutions, little dreamed that any circumstances could arise by which they would be made the catspuw of English statesmen. The undoubted object of representative government is, that the people, j through their representatives, should have a J voice in the disposal of any funds raised by local taxation; and can it be fairly said that they execute this power if one fraction of their revenue is appropriated without their consent, even though it be ostensibly appropriated for their own advantage ? Our readers will call to mind that every postal contract that has ever been made for the use of Great Britain and the Australian Colonies, has been arranged and entered upon without consulting those latter contractors; but, who have, never theless, been called upon to bear an exact rateable proportion of the cost. They will not omit to consider that these contracts haye, to all appearance, been made with the view of s-rving party ends, irrespective of any advantage to the Antipodes Nor will they foget that all the efforts that have been made by this colony to induce the establishment of the Panama route have been fruitless, though the Legislative Council passed and carried a resolution strongly in its favor ; and the Legislative Assembly voted L 50.000 a-year to further thi.-< line of postal communication. Remembering the short-comings of the European and Australian Royal Mail Company, and contrasting them with the regularity of the present service, the colonists of Australia have been contented to accept things as they arc, without too closely examining "how they came so. 'However, it is' the * la*i pound that breaks the donkey's bac'. and verily our feilow-coloni'sts mr t be greater donkeys than we take them o be if they allow the burthen of this last pou . L When Great Britain proposed the exist <r contract for tender, it was for a through s. °- yice from Southampton to Sydney, entirely independent of the East India route. Five tenders were sent in, but of these there were only two from companies of undoubted wealth. The Royal Mail Company, who, in winding up the contract of the European and Australian Company had had all possible experience as to the cost of the service, put in the highest tender, which was for L 250,000 per annum, and to be performed by six steamers—three paddle sfearners of 1,600 tons between Suez and Gallc, and three screw steamers of 2 200 tons between Galle and Sydney. The Chairman of the Royal Mail Company was heard to state that the'amount named was the lowest that could insure the contractors against loss ; but that he was aware (bear in mind he was a member of Parliament) that the Peninsular and Oriental Company would put in a tender that would bear a loss with the view of driving away all competition from the Eastern seas. Such was, indeed, the case ; and the lowest tender but one of the five was that of the Peninsular and Oriental Company, who undertook to perform the service for L 175,000 per annum. Before the expiration of twelve months the successful tenderers found that the service left a loss; and we have not the slightest hesitation in laying that they knew beforehand that it would leave such loss, but which they nevertheless made the ground of dermndirjfj an increase of subsidy. Without consultation with the colonies, this increase was granted, and for a few mouths the se-vice was performed at a cost of L 210,000 a year; but this increase was not the aim of the Peninsular and Oriental Company. And the next step was to abandon the through service, and give the colonies the benefit, of the branch line from Galle at a cost of Ll3B,oof>. As a matter of course, the branch line has always, of neces.»ity, been subservient to the trunk line; and more than one instance has occurred where Australian passengers could find no room in the Indian boat, but were obliged to await, at their own expense, the arrival of another steamer. Our readers will, we are sure, give the Peninsular and Oriental Company credit for having managed this affair very successfully, and will, we think, imagine that there might possibly be a wheel within a wheel to induce the English Government to wink at the job. But now comes the crowning point. It is found that the Australian letterboxes occupy a certain amount of room in the Indian steamer, and the extent of this space is valued at L 30,000 a-year, which again, without further consultation with the colonies, the mother country (rather of a stepmother in this case), has added on to the Australian contract, diminishing by so much the charge of the contract to India, and raising the cost of the Australian bunch service to nearly L.170,000 per annum. Now, let us call our readers attention to the following memoranda: —The original tender of the present contractors for the through service was Ll 7.3,000 per annum. A comj any, offering undoubted guarantee, proffered to" execute ""the Panam,-' service for L 120.000 per annum. This colom has voted LoO,OOO a-year to the ctablishmerv of the Panama route, apprehending that t • j home Government would have contribu- \ a like sum, and that the service co . I have been performed for L 100,000. year. New Zealand has voted L3O.C 0 a-year for five years, for the establishment, of this route. Queensland has now the. means, and would, doubtless, be willing to contribute to the same end. To what does all this point ? That New. South Wales, Queensland, and New Zealand, should act in confederation to establish their own postal service with Great Britain, via Panama, acting entirely independent of Great Britain, receiving all inward and outward postage, and placing themselves in the position of sieam navigation confederate contractors; that Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania, should make such arrangements as seemed to them most advisable, for the continuance of the present postal service. We have not the slightest hesitation in. asserting that the carrying into effect of these arrangement »would, far from entailing pecuniary sacrifice on our exchequer, place it in a better position than the one it is now called upon to occupy, while the political and social advantages that Would accrue therefrom would be far greater than even the most enthusiastic can now figure to themselves. Then, and then only, would the drea«n be realised which would hail our noble city as Queen of the Pacific.

Moorish Punishment of Mtjrdkr,—-When we were makiug oar purchases ia the bazaar, the crowd suddenly opened, ami, to our horror,-we saw a Ciiminal who had committed murder undergoing his sentence, led by two soldiers.; Immediately behind' him was a third soldier with a knotted rope in Ins hand. The man was stripped to his waist, his hands were tied across his breast, his back was purple aad streaming with blood, his countenance was pale and fall of agony; he was to be taken frompraol weekly, and to receive four hundred hohes each: time until he litid.,. This- scene,haunt d. us for days after.— A fmnily Tour Round the Coast oj'Spain and, JRortugal. By Lady Dunbar* ? "

| "YELLOW JACK." (From Chambers 1 Jour/ml.} The Merrima.; i. a b'own «j), th<». iNlinassas has been sunk iw t';c Missi-Mppi, Nurtolk h^s j bt-fu taken b\ C.oneral Wool, aud New ! Orleans is occu, ;• d In- Geuerai Butler; but it i 1 not irnprobab.e that another belligerent will son ap;>oar xxp-.tn the scene of the American wir, more foiMklib'e than any iron-clad ; ;- oaraer—more powerful than any Federal or >nfederate commander — General Yellow Jick. i The.yellow fever, the dreaded vomito of the | r est Indies, the most fatal of tropical epimics, has visited New Orleans once in three ; ;ars, on an average, for half a century. It .as often appeared at Mobile, Savannah, and Charleston at the same time as at JS'ew Orleans. It has desolated the banks of the Mississippi at times as high as .Memphis. On the Atlantic seaboard it was terribly ikral a il-w years ago, at Norfolk and Portsmouth, in Virginia, and it formerly paid occasional visits to .Philadelphia and New York. A southern cit}', during the visitation of the yellow fever, presents a mournful spectacle. The persons attacked are mostly strangers from the; north, or emigrants from Europe. Very few born in the south, or acclimated by several years' residence, are its victims. But no stranger is safe. lie may fall in the street by day, or he waked by an attack in the night. He is borne to the "hospital attended by the members of a humane society, or the Sisters of Charity, and in. from three to five days, in a majority of cases, is carried to a nameless grave. His coffin is thrust into an t; oven," and closed up with a few bricks and some mortar. How fatal this disease may be among strangers, is shown in the returns of cases in the hospitals of New Orleans: in the Tuoro Infirmary, the deaths to the cases have been 40*72 per cent. ; in the Lurenberg Hospital, 52*66' per cent. : and in the hospitals of the Board of Health, 33 to 47 per cent. In one season, in which the deaths from yellow fever iv New Orleans were 7 011, there were 3,569 Irish victims, and 2,3:J9 Germans. Americans from the Northern States, who arc unacclimated, generally leave New Orleans by the first of May. The Irish and (jernrm immigrants who settle there do not leave the city at all, hut a large per ceutage perish by yellow fuvcr, and other diseases incident to a hot and malarious climate. Should this fetal epidemic visit New Orleans, and oilier southern cities during the present summer, when occupied by large garrisons of northern ttoops, more lives Avill be lost in a single month of such occupation than by nil the'battlcs of the war. The Irish Germans and northern men composing the Federal army are those most liable to fall victims to 'this disease, and should it commence at any point, it may be expected to spread to every southern camp and city.

What are the probabilities of such a visitation ? There has been no yellow lever in the sculh for the past two years; it is due, therefore, according to the averages of the past. Hut to form any .judgment of the probability of such a terrible addition to the horrors of war, we must consider the origin of yellow fever, and its mode of propagation. From a careful study of its phenomena, we are satisfied that it is a contagious disease, carried from place to place, like the small-pox or plague. It cannot he shown that it rises epoutancously in any part of the United State?. It prevaih at all t-mcs on portions of the tropical Afr.v m coast. It exists every summer at Vera On/, Mexico, and almost e\\;-y summer a Fa.vi.na and Cuba. It is brought to New Orleans f-om one of these pl.ee*, and ordins ily carried from Havana to S-vanuah and C utrjeston. From New Or--1 .. .s it spreads tc Mobile, Galveston, Vicks- ' g, and .sometimes Memphis. •- rigid and effective quarantine would keep i ut of ali these places; and it is by this i ns that New York and Philadelphia have .1 so long protected from its assauks. When

•c cities were attacked, the disease began at i .-■ ship in which it was brought, and spread i cm that point through the neighhoorhoo i. A. zordon sanitaire was drawn around the infected district, and it did not spread beyo-J. A few years ago, a ship from the West Indies', having yellow (ever on board, lay at quarantine at New York. One day, when the hatches were open, as the ship lay at anchor in the Narrows, the wind blew a faint sickly odor into a little village on the shore of Staten Island. In a few days there was a large number of ca-^e? of yellow fever, and twenty-one persons died. The result was a mob, which burned down the quarantine hospitals, and the removal of fever-ships to a safer locality. When the yellow fever has spread from New Orleans to the villages of the interior, it has proved very fatal to southern residents, and even to negroes. For a safe acclimation, people must have passed through the conta gion o( the disease ; they must have had something like inoculation. It is not enough to live where the disease has been, or might be. A person, too, who has passed the ordeal, and considers himself safe, either from having had the disease, or from having been exposed to the action of its mysterious cause, may lose his invulnerability by living in a cool northern climate. Tins is, at least, the belief in New Orleans, where northern resident?, having become acclimated, prefer to remain, rather than risk the danger of a reriond ordeal. Physicians, as usual, have disputed upon the question of the contagiousness of the disease, and the manner in which it is carried from place to pi ice. Commercial interests arc opposed to quarantines; peop'e believe, in such matters, what it is their interest to believe. But the facts are too strong for anticontagionist theorising. The disease comes with vessels trom VeraCruz, or Havana, when the season is far enough advanced to give it a reception, an atmosphere in which to propagate itself. It is killed by the first hard frost. Some suppose Ihe matter-of contagion-'to be of a vegetable character; some, that it is animalcular. It is certain that, whatever it may be. the frost kills it. As soon as the New Orleans oapera announce a black frost—for a mare | hoar frost is sufficient—the river steamers and railways are crowded with passenger?, and in a week New Orleans puts on her winter festivity. But there have been cases in which ttie materics morbi have found protection even from Jack Fro3t. In a house and room in which there had been in the summer "yellow fever, stood a trunk which had been opened during this period. It was closed; frost came; Yellow Jack' took his departure, and the house was filled with people. After a little time, the trunk was opened; the fever broke out a'srain in the house, and two or three persons-died of if.

So d'iath, whick.conies over the blue sea in ships, and can be locked up in a trunk, may be cirrieu about in fr-?.s-packofa pedlar. Thus, a Jew. nedbr went voni-fcjew Orleans during the epiJemic, when VCsniess was dull, into the c r.itry village*. At the first house in which *v opened his j ik the fever broke out. Its iu-,c victims we some persons who had *■ ed that hous-. and 'xamined the pedlar's es. The fevu- gradually spread over the lge, and carr.id off a large portion of its i.-ulation. The sanitary condition of thi* • i ige may have been good or bad— we know a ling of the-habits of the people—but there • o reason to believe that they would have d the'yeiiow f e ver, had it not been brought ia the pack of the Jew pedlar, stowed away among his silks and laces.

At any time,-and anywliere, the yellow' fever is a terrible- disease. If you were to cill in, one after another, six of the inpst eminent physicians in New Orleans, or in any city j-.i which it has prevailed, it is probable t.i.ii J.iey would prescribe six different modes ol treatment, and that the patient's chance of recovery would not be improved by any. The nursing of a Creole negress, accustomed to the disease, is considered better than any of the usual modes of mcd;cal treatment. The mortality of "yellow fever is by no means uniform;, while'it has risen in the New Orleans hospitals to 52 per cent,, and in an army hospital might be expected, with probable complications, to be much greater, in private practice, among the bettor sort of patients in the same city, it rank's below-20 per cent. : and we have'known tlie mortality, under peculiarly favorable circumstances, to fall as low as 5 per cent, If tlie iood, the air, and the habits of men could be controlled, they might be insured at a lew premium against this as well assail other epidemic diseases. Even the ma'arias oi1 x c Aincan coast or the rice swamp may be n:ot with proper precautions-. The short railway across the Isthmus of Panama, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific, cost the lives ot' five thousand men ; yet one contractor on that work assured us that he had never lost a man during its prosecution, because he had insisted on ceitain sanitary conditions. Jf these were incorporated into" the discipline of an army, the cities of the south might be safely held by northern garrisons ; but without some such precautions, vand those of a very stringent character, Yellow Jack will be more formidable to the north than Bragg or Beauregard.