WONDERFUL SPEED.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1722, 22 December 1887, Page 4

WONDERFUL SPEED.

Following upon the telegraphic report of an extrardinary trip made by the P. and O. Company's new steamer Victoria to Bombay (Bays the " Argus ") comes the wonderful voyage of the Orient Company's Ormgz which baa juat reaohed Adelaide after the fastest ran on record. The Ormus haß travelled from Suez to Adelaide at a rate much faster than the average ■peed of railway trains on most of our lines, and nearly as fast as on the main lines, and she has landed her mails houre before Another magnificent ship — the Carthage — whose mails left London a week previously. It is when we tee these results that we can gaage the improvements made within recent years m ships •nd marine engine building. Very few years ago a 5) days' run was the talk of the day, and when the St. Osyth cams hltherwarda and placed va in possession of letters six weekß old, it was thought that nothing better could be done, Year utter year, 1 however, Ins reoord was beaten, and now we have Buch vessels running as the Ormcz, which can land mails m twenty-eight days from London, the Victoria, the Oroya, the Britannia, and the Orizaba, which are making, or will make, the voyage to Australia almost equal m knots per hour to voyages across the Atlantic. Snch good steamers an the Orient, Carthage, Austral, aud Rome, though new, are becoming by comparison permanently old, and the fleeter palaces which now plough the seas "will merely have their day. Of course there must be a limit to racord breaking, but how far or how oear that limit may be, cannot of coarse be settled, The present and prospective advantages may be more clearly estimated. In the first p'asa, we are very likely to have a much fas'er mail service than is to be actually stipulated for m the contract t« be Bigned wllhin the next few dayß or weeks. If we had insisted on-Selivery m twenty. eight days, the companies would have demanded subsidies, but we are promised this service without undue coat. Competition for passenger traffic, apart from the natural rivalry between two great proprietaries, will operate to our advantage m this respect, and bring us into much closer communidatloa with kith and kin across tho water, \