DEATH OF SIR R. W. CAMERON.

Otago Witness, 5 December 1900, Page 34

DEATH OF SIR R. W. CAMERON.

The death of Sir Roderick W. Cameron in London was annotniced in this city on Saturday (says the New York Journal of Commerce of October 22). Sir Roderick had been in failing health for more than a year, and he sailed from this city early last August in the hope of improving his condition. Last spring he was confined to his home at No. 185 Madison avenue, by sickness, but from that time up to a few days ago he had enjoyed, it is said, fairly good health for a man of his age. He was in his seventy-sixth year. Roderick W. Cameron was a native of Glengarry County, Canada, and was born on July 25, 1825. Ho •was educated under the care of Dr John Rae, the political economist, and at the district school at Kingston, Upper Canada, where he enjoyed the companionship of a fellow-pupil, Oliver Mowatt, for so many years the leader of the Liberal party of Ontario. In 1852 he visited New York with the intention of making arrangements for the charter of a ship in which a party of young Canadian adventurers and he were to make the voyage to Melbourne, Australia. This first charter of the ship Revenue proved such a success that Mr Cameron saw his opportunity and promptly decided to remain in New York city and take the chances of establishing himself in the position of a New York merchant. He was then a novice, and knew little or nothing about shipping, not having had any previous experience. Notwithstanding this, he despatched to Australia in the first three years

upwards of three thousand emigrants and many thousand tons of American products and manufacture?. Not all of these ventures proved profitable, however. In the first few years he purchased and owned many ships, all of them afterward disposed of in Australia. In 1854- he was advised by the late Admiral Porter, who had just completed a voyage to Australia, commanding the American steamer Golden Age, to establish a line of steamers between Panama and New Zealand and Australia, and was encouraged by English steamship owners to carry out the project, but he relinquished the scheme, as the tide of emigiation had then nearly ceased.

In 1570 Sir Roderick admitted as a partner William A. Street, under the firm name of R. W. Cameron and Co. His young friend Street camo into the office in 1858, at the age of fifteen years, and had the experience during his clerkship of voyages to Australia, China, and the Indian Ocean, and in 1662 he sailed to the Island of Tombak, in the Malayan Archipelago, where rice was grown similar in appearance to that of the Carolinas. A cargo of this was brought to New York by tlio ship. The firm has branches in Sydney (N.S.W.) and London, and is now one of the very few houses remaining in New York which in 1E52 included among others such names as N. and G. Griswold, Howland, and Aspinwall, Grinnell, Minturn, and Co., Wetmore and Co., Henry and Murray, Olyphant and Co., Chai-les H. Marshall, Moses Taylor and Co., and A. A. Low and Co., all known in their day as merchant princes. The firm has made successful ventures to Tndia, China, and Japan, but now confines its enterprise to the Australian and New Zealand colonies.