Cape Nichola in daylight also, on the
second day thereafter.

The old _Galatea_ frigate might be carried up from Jamaica and moored
at Cape Nichola Mole, on board of which those mails and specie may be
deposited, that require to be disembarked from such steamers, &c., as
cannot be detained till the packet arrives to receive them. This,
however, will seldom be the case, nor to any great extent; as the
homeward-bound packet, whether steamer or sailing-vessel, will almost
always be at Cape Nichola before the steamer gets up from the leeward.
She may also be used to hold coals for a supply for the steamer to a
certain extent.

Let the fact be urged in the strongest manner, that a communication
once a month, to any given place, will never pay, nor answer any great
or good purpose. Mails, or rather letters and passengers, will not
wait for such a length of time, especially when these could, as for
example from the Havannah, almost be in England, by way of New York,
in the interval that would elapse between the departure of one packet
and another, when there was only one packet in the month; but give two
each month, and neither could ever be so.

The arrangements, and the extent of the internal Post-office
establishments of Great Britain, are upon the most splendid and
efficient footing. There is nothing of a similar kind in any other
country, either in management, or combination, or regularity, that can
equal or even be compared to them. It is, however, much otherwise with
all her transmarine mail communications. They are all particularly
deficient in combination, limited in their operations, and inefficient
as regards the machinery employed to carry the mails. This, in a more
particular manner, is the case with the West Indies: the small sailing
vessels there employed are generally very unfit for such a service,
and the steamers sent out to work them, with the exception of the _Flamer_,
being only of 100-horse power, and besides badly constructed, are (p. 008)
wholly unfit for the service in any way; and even the vessel named,
which is 140-horse power, though much superior to any of the other
three, the _Carron_, the _Echo_, and the _Albyn_, is still too small
to perform her work in proper and reasonable time, or to stem the
currents and trade winds, to say nothing of tempests, which, as
regards the two former, constantly prevail in the seas in that quarter
of the world.

It may also be remarked, that to extend or to a