The Evening Herald. TUESDAY, AUGUST 31, 1869.

Wanganui Herald, Volume III, Issue 640, 31 August 1869, Page 2

The Evening Herald. TUESDAY, AUGUST 31, 1869.

The Panama mail service was no sooner discontinued than the value of it was seen and appreciated. The company broke down, and it was impossible for New Zealand with New South Wales, to sustain a losing concern. If the Panama line had been kept open, the Suez would have been almost abandoned by New Zealand colonists. It is done with, and it will probably be a long time, an era, before it be resuscitated. It has been superseded in the advantages of a quick and agreeable route by way of San Francisco, which will be placed •in steam communication with this Colony before long. It will. not require much persuasion to induce our American friends to organise a com-1 pany and establish regular communi- { cation between California and New Zealand.. The sum of £20,080 has been placed on .the estimates,to wards the service, and it is supposed by fcome that this will induce the United States to take up the subject at once. If the sum be too small, as we believe it will be found, it will at least have the. effect of drawing the attention of America to the subject, and of evoking proposals on her side. Direct communication with the States would, as one of the members remarked who spoke on the subject, incalculably •benefit this Colony. The route is considerably shorter than the Panama, as it would bring us within thirtyseven days of England. From Wellington to Smi Francisco it is twentyone days steaming ; from the latter placs to New York, overland, requires only six days, and conveys the traveller through Utah, giving him a glimpse of what most people have only learned by scraps, and cajrryiiig him

ihrough ajp. hitherto unexplqred wilcierness. From New York to liverpool is a passage of ten days, and here the journey is complete. Mr Macandrew, who proposedthat the sum be placed on the estimates, was sanguine that the Americans "would be tempted by the offer to establish closer commercial relations with the Colony. What is more probable, than that the stream of immigration to New Zealand would set in by way of San Francisco ? A. little Yankee enterprise would really be a, good thing for us, tending, as it would, to change the slow nature of the governing classes, and send iis bounding over our native difficulties, instead of reasoning at them. There are few who will object to the proposed route. It has not one disadvantage. Th ere is no Panama, with its fatal fevers ; there are large cities that every traveller ought to see, and the monotony of the journey would be relieved by pleasant changes. There is a prospect of the 2STew Zealand and San Francisco mail service becoming unjhit accompli, and it is not too soon for Gorernment 'to open tap negotiations.