SAN FRANCISCO TO ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 1031, 2 September 1871, Page 11

SAN FRANCISCO TO ENGLAND.

(FKOM A UOKKESX'ONDENT.)

The journey no, San Francisco to England can be done cheaply enough, but I venture to doubt if anybody will manage to avoid a large margin of waste the first time he travels across America. I will endeavour to point out some of the little experiences I have acquired, although I fear that nobody ever learns from the sorrows of others. At San Francisco the traveller should go to the Occidental or the Grand Hotel. They are the best, and a little the dearest, though the cheapest he will find in America after he leaves Frisco. But being large estab-

lishments they offer facilities to travellers which smaller ones do not, and the daily charge of 3dol is not exorbitant. I will not stop to describe this beautiful city and harbour, nor to recommend pleasure excursions. I willassume the travell er to be desirous of pushing on as quickly as he can. To do so he must not be seduced into confiding his affairs to any of the many very agreeable and gentlemanly mun who will introduce themselves to him anil offer their services. These are the paid touters, and very highly paid touters, of the various rival lines to the East. The Australian passengers' interests lie with tho steam-boat company, which has a special arrangement in favour of its own constituents. Therefore, before attempting to take his ticket, the Australian should call at Messrs Brenhan and Holladay's ofhee, where they will be supplied, on payment in American gold, with an order upon a railway office for a ticket to New York, at some 20dol less than is paid by the public. Before this order can be obtained, however, the Australian must get his sovereigns changed into American gold. At the hotel he perhaps would only be allowed 4dol 75c for his 20s, but by going round the moneychangers, who occupy about half Montgomery street, he will do better. A sovereign is really worth 4dol 80c, but as much as 4dol 85c can be got for it sometimes. Some impatient friends of ours, who were in a hurry to go on with the mails, paid, through one of the touters, 20dol too much for their tickets and lost 7c on every sovereign. After visiting all the money-changers, we decided on dealing with a Mr John Barbee, 422 Montgomery street, who offered at first the highest price obtainable without any bargaining. A slight advantage can be got by several jjassengers clubbing their gold, as, if the parcel of sovereigns is large, the ] trice is better. Having got 20dol pieces for sovereigns, it is then necessary to buy a certain quantity of greenbacks, say £10 or £15 worth. Mr Barbee supplied us with these at the rate of lOdol of greenbacks for fidol of gold. After passing Ogden, everything can be bought for greenbacks as well as for sold, and at railway stations they will not allow any premium on gold for small sums. The passenger should now pack everything he is not likely to want — leaving nothing but a single carpet bag to accompany him in the carriages. If he means to travel first-class and take a sleeping car. his expenses, exclusive of his food, will be 120dol for his ticket, 4dol per night for his sleeping berth as far as Omaha, £.<■., four nights, and 3dol a night afterwards, i.e., 2 nights. If he travels second-class, he will find the journey very laborious, but not cold at night, as the cars are rather overheated. If he breaks down on the road, he will have to pay "local" rates for the privilege of going first-class and having a sleeping car.

Throughout the journey it must be remembered that while the regular obligatory charges cr.n be calculated with certainty, anything outside of these belongs to the inscrutable, and their cost cannot be calculated in advance. If the traveller wishes to stop at Salt Lake City, he can do so, at a total cost of about lOdol, by losing one day. A train from thence meets the San Francisco train at 7. 30 at Ogden, and catches it next morning. There is a good hotel at Salt Lake City, Townsend House, but of all the cities the traveller will pass, this is the least interesting, and presents least value for the delay and expense.

From Frisco to Omaha, I would advise the traveller to trust wholly to the scenery and the society of his friends to divert his mind. In crossing the mountains, he will find plenty to interest him, and even when on the prairies, and half choked with alkali dust, he will look out for game occasionally to make an excitement. But for the last few hours before he reaches Omaha, the Australian will need nothing better to occupy his mind than the face of nature under the influence of human industry. Every mile will show him farms still more highly improved, cattle and sheep still more highly bred, buildings still more elegantly erected, and plantations more tastefully and usefully laidout, till he reaches New York. Omaha is only a city on paper. It is a remarkable point of the journey, as here you leave the barbarism of the prairie, the desert, and the mountains, and at once plunge into the beehive of eastern industry. It is remarkable, too, because here the traveller ceases to be badly and expensively fed, and on leaving Omaha he is agreeably surprised by being told that the dining-room car is attached to the train for four hours, where he can get a really good dinner for 75 cents.

Up to Omaha the passenger often trusts to a lunch basket which they till at San Francisco, but on the whole I think this system defective, as the bread gets too hard and the meat bad, and thero are sure to be fifty trifles forgotten, while a cup of hot coffee which he is sure to rush out and buy at the appointed stations costs imperceptibly less than the dinner,

bad as it may be, provided. If, however, he is determined to stop at Omaha, there is an hotel (Couzzen's) already there, not a very good one, and a better is being built.

At Frisco the railway company give the traveller duplicate brass tokens for each parcel of his baggage. As an Australian traveller he can take 2501bs weight free, These tokens he surrenders at Omaha, and an official changes them for others to Chicago. This involves no trouble at all to the traveller.

The troubles of the journey end at the Missouri. After this the sleeping oars are cheaper and better. Indeed, knowing people do not even pay 3dols but remain in the first-class all day and only take a bed at night, for which they pay 2dols as far as Chicago, and Idol 50c from thence to New Y r ork. All such economies are difficult, if not impossible, to the Australian. But a determined colonist by insisting might often save a good deal. If he can carry all his effects he will not be plundered at the stations, but if not he will find no civil porters or railway officials to help him. All the -way from the Missouri to Chicago is one long feast to the eyes of the practical settler. There he will see what the giant enterprise and patient toil of the Illinois men has accomplished. There is a country prospering in the most legitimate manner, with no fictitious impetus derived from the fitful prosperity of gold discoveries. Cities every twenty miles larger than any in New Zealand, each adapted for a special trade or a special manufacture, and built in a style of substantial elegance we cannot boast in our colonies.

Not even did the men of Illinois possess the advantage our colonists enjoyed of access to, and use of, unlimited capital. Whatever they could not earn was lent sparingly, and dovibtingly, at rates as extortionate as in our colonies, or worse. To-day Chicago, no oldf>r than the golden rivals of San Francisco and Melbourne, with no trade but that derived from her own manufactures and her own cereal products, 1200 miles from the s,ea, is a larger, better built, and in every respect a more wonderful place than either, and has a pojmlation greater than that of both combined. Here I would advise the traveller to rest a clay or two, and to examine all that has been achieved in 20 years. Here he will see a lake boat of 400 tons burden loaded in four hours ; here he will a city watered through a tunnel which runs out three "miles into the lake ; here he Avill meet with agricultural implement manufactories which turn out 1000 mowing machines in the year, and sell them all ; and he Avill return to his hotel of 500 rooms and 30 billiard tables in a single chamber to confess how utterly and shamefully we have been beaten in the race. The charges at the Sherman Hotel are 4.50 dois per diem, which, as compared with the Occidental, are disproportionate. From Chicago the traveller crosses at Detroit into Canada to reach the Falls, which I will not stop to describe, as they have doubtless been far more ably described a thousand times. All I "will do is to advise him so to arrange his arrival and departure as to reach Niagara from Detroit in the day time, that he may see the garden of Canada and make mental comparisons ; and that he may so time his arrival at New York as to have broad daylight to admire the grand scenery of the Hudson Valley.

Though no bed can be more comfortable than the sleeping car, I certainly cannot advise a married traveller to bring his wife this way. English women cannot undress before 20 or 30 people, like Americans, nor can they dispense with the daily ablutions to which they are accustomed. A man can wash himself at the open basin in the corner, but English ladies would not like it. Moreover, the fatigue is great, and the economy problematical, while the intrusive advances of the American women everjnvhere would worry and discontent our more retiring ladies.

1 think a traveller who goes first class and stops at Chicago and Niagara long enough to "do'" them thoroughly will, not embark at New York without having spent 200dols at least, and perhaps £50. The fare from Auckland is about £35, and with contingent expenses, £5, and the steamer to England by the Cunard, £26, and sundry expenses on board, say £4, so that his trip, economically managed, will cost £120.

He may save a few pounds by taking the Inman or National line instoad of the Cunard, but practically may consider himself lucky if his total expenses aro covered by £120 to Liverpool.

A Taieri correspondent informs the Brace Standard that owing to the line weather which has recently prevailed, farm work is well forward. Some of the farmers have completed "rain sowing, and are now engaged prejiaring land for green crops. Some patches of land, in sheltered places, are being planted with potatoes. The crops generally look well ; but evidences of bad sowing are easily noticed.