great superabundance of
propeller stock in Great Britain, which can be purchased frequently at
less than half its cost, and these vessels running the short distance
between Havre and Liverpool very cheaply, (_See pages 108-13_,) the
Cunarders have cut the Havre freights down from forty to fifteen
dollars per ton, and sometimes for months together to ten dollars per
ton. As a matter of course, this price would not pay the handling and
care of these costly articles; but at fifteen dollars it enabled the
Cunard line to fill their ships and derive some profit; as most of
them, with the exception of the _Persia_, run slowly, use less coal,
and have more freight room. All of these freights are, however, small
in quantity, and not much to be relied on from year to year, as will
be seen below, in consequence of the action of propellers.

There is another class of business which mail steamers can do at
remunerating prices; but which is exceedingly limited anywhere, and
not at all known on some lines. This is in Express packages. They pay
a high price; but seldom reach more than three or four tons under the
most favorable circumstances. In the early stages of the California
lines, when there was a rush of travel to the gold regions, and a
hurried transit required for a thousand little necessaries of life,
the New-York and Aspinwall and the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's
lines transported a large express freight outward at every voyage,
amounting sometimes to two hundred tons; but the golden days of such
cargo have long gone by, and California is now supplied like the rest
of the world by the cheaper and more deliberate transport of sailing
vessels; and the steamers are left to their legitimate business of
mails and passengers. Taking together all of the classes of freights
which steamers having mail payment are capable of transporting, they
amount at present to but an insignificant part of the income by which
these steamers can be run. During the last six years these freights
have reduced more than one hundred per cent; and goods which were then
profitable to the steamer, are now taken only "to fill up." And the
chief reason for this reduction arises not so much from competition
between the steam-lines, which well knew that they could not transport
these freights when reduced to the present low prices, but from the
introduction of a large number of propellers, some of which were
originally designed for this species of trade, a