SAN FRANCISCO AND AUSTRALIA.

Otago Witness, Issue 919, 10 July 1869, Page 10

SAN FRANCISCO AND AUSTRALIA.

(Bulletin.)

There has recently been a consolidation of coast steamship interests in this city, placing the ownership more largely in local hands, and the direction entirely so. It is strange that local steamship enterprise has not moved to occupy the new field which mußt Boon open in the direction of Australia and New Zealand. The service between those c luntries and Panama having been abandoned by the English company which undertook it without sufficient capital, the way is open for an American company to put steamships on the shorter, more economical, and more promising route, between Australia and San Francisco. This route would not only effect a saving of a week or ten days on each trip, and consequently a great saving in fuel and interest, but it would connect the flourishing cities of Sydney, Melbourne, and Auckland, with the metropolis of Western America, and with the most direct mail and passenger route to Europe. All the facts in support of this assertion have been too recently detailed in our columns to need repetition. We refer to them only to enforce the remark that the business which awaits the establishment of this line ought to be in American hands, and ought to be centralised in San Francisco. So inuoh surplus capital is accumulating here now, that there is no practical difficulty in the way of securing for this city the ownership of all the ocean steamship lines that may hereafter be needed. Our Bteam marine must constantly increase, and it offers one of the finest inducements for wise local investment that can be imagined. | The example of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company shows how a colossal property may be built up from comparatively small beginnings. The local company that will establish a steam line to Australia may find it eventually far more profitable than investments in a acore of uncertain mines. Congress could be positively relied upon to aid an enterprise promising so much beneQt to American commerce, and the traffic of what mußt one day be an independent English Empire already invicea it. A city with tho advantages and aspirations of San Francisoo ought nob to be always dependent upon the other Bide of the continent for the means of carrying on its commerce. It will realise more rapidly its imperial dreams whon it becomes broader and longer-sighted in its enterprise. The capitalists who shall first gain control of steamship routes on the Paoific, who shall first establish steamship building as ono of the local manufactures, will lay the foundation of immense fortunes and honourable reputation. It would bo pleasant to see this opportunity embraced by thoso who havo long laboured here, and who have risen wi h the State itself. If these refuse to do what they might, now-comera will bo more sagacious, for it is not in the fates that San Francisco should remain an appanage of New York in respect to the moans of conveying and extending ita foreign business. As California has ita Stanfords, Huntingtons, and Croakers in railways, so it should have its Webbs, Collinses, and Vonderbilta in ocean steamers.

NAriKii, tho author, called upon Lafltto, the bunker, ono morning, and said, " You'll think mo very bold, perhaps, but I wont to borrow thrro thouwnd' fmnko." — Yes, I do," replied Lafltto; "but you'll admit I am bolder than you, tor I intend to lend thorn to ydu,"