irty-five of these
vessels at profitable rates, in this one item of their business alone.
Such expenditures are not necessary to any other steam company in the
world. The British lines in the Indian Ocean and the China Seas are
supplied with domestic coal which comes at very reasonable prices, and
is shipped but a short distance.

Yet this Company performs this distant and difficult service with
great regularity and at a low price. They have never lost a trip, a
mail-bag, or a passenger by marine disaster during the eight years
that they have been running in the Pacific. This results from the fact
of the Company having thirteen steamers. If all of the steamers now in
commission were sunk, they could supply their place from their reserve
fleet and have no hiatus in their service. Such a spare fleet is an
enormous expense; but it is positively indispensable to regular and
highly efficient service. It is singular that under these
circumstances they can perform the service at $1.70 cents per mile. It
is a notorious fact that these steamers could not have supported
themselves in 1854-55 without the aid which they obtained from the
Government for the services which they performed. They never have
transported much freight, as it would not bear the transhipment at
Panama. The small quantity which they had was during the first years
after the discovery of gold, and then only. They have never at any
time brought any eastward. The Panama Railroad was a splendid
consummation of which the world had dreamed for years, and toward
whose completion this Company was highly instrumental. Yet it did not
enable the steamers to transport freight, and it never will.

These steamers run the 3,300 miles between Panama and San Francisco by
a time-table. They arrive at either end within a very few hours of
thirteen and a half days, including all of the stoppages, which are
also made at specified hours. Thus the average speed of the steamers
is about 254 miles per day. They touch at Acapulco and Mazanilla, and
supply San Diego, Monterey, San Pedro, Santa Barbara, San Luis, and
Obispo, ports of California, from Panama by a branch line. This is an
extra service, and is not taken into account in calculating the
mileage paid the Company.

The steamers have carried probably 175,000 passengers to California,
and have brought back about $200,000,000 in gold. They have also by
their semi-monthly line from San Francisco to Oregon assisted in
populating