s substituted for Falmouth, the weekly trips
were changed to three per month, and the subsidy was reduced
accordingly, or to L20,500 per annum. The service has been performed
on these terms ever since. The Aberdeen and Shetland contract was made
in 1840, at L900 per year, after a failure to run on L600, by a
previous arrangement. It now continues as then made.

It is known that the first passage across the Atlantic was made in the
American steamer "Savannah," which left Savannah, Georgia, on the 25th
May, 1819, and at the end of twenty-two days arrived in Liverpool,
steaming only fourteen days of the time. The Savannah was only 350
tons tonnage, and had an engine of ninety horses' power. Captain Moses
Rogers was her commander. The "Sirius" arrived in New-York on the 23d
of April, 1838. The steamer "Great Western" next followed, in the same
year. And although this was only nineteen years ago, it is instructive
to notice the observations which the _London Times_ made at that day.
That journal said, March 31, 1838:

"There is really no mistake in this long-talked of project of
navigating the Atlantic ocean by steam. There is no doubt of the
intention to make the attempt, and to give the experiment, as such, a
fair trial. The Sirius is actually getting under way for America."

On the 4th of July, 1839, the British Government entered into a
contract with Samuel Cunard of Halifax for a semi-monthly mail line
between Liverpool, and Halifax, and Boston, at the sum of L60,000 or
$300,000 per annum. That contract inaugurated a new era in our
American commerce with the old world, and gave an impulse to those
international interests and those commercial amities which have bound
Great Britain and the United States in the bonds of enduring
friendship and mutual, neighborly dependence. Boston soon proved
inadequate to the support of the entire line, and half of the steamers
were sent to New-York; and thus they continue to run to this day. It
is a singular fact that since that contract was made, eighteen years
ago, there has never been one transatlantic steamer except those of
Mr. Cunard running to or from that port. This contract was renewed
with Mr. Cunard in 1850, when weekly trips were required for the
greater portion of the year, and the subsidy was advanced, not in the
ratio of the service, which was only doubled, but as three to one,
from L60,000 to L173,340, or from $300,000 to $866,700. The experience
of twelve years had de