The Evening Star. WEDNESDAY, MAY 4, 1870.

Auckland Star, Volume I, Issue 99, 4 May 1870, Page 2

The Evening Star. WEDNESDAY, MAY 4, 1870.

This day the second steamer on the San Francisco mail route leaves our shores for Honolulu. If eventual success can be predicted from the first reception given to enterprise, the new mail route will be successful indeed. It was first opened amid a blaze of popularity. It might have been supposed that its novelty caused this; but when we see the second steamer crowded with passengers and mails, as the City of Melbourne is, and a large number of names on the passen-ger-list of the succeeding boat, we cannot help concluding that there is something in the route itself singularly attractive to the general public. We think the evidence is conclusive that it will be only maladroitness on the part of those in whose hands this graud enterprise is placed that can prevent the scheme becoming one of the most popular and successful of the age. What a pity it is, with such grand advantages borne to our very doors, that the chronic apathy of Auckland continues. While all Wellington is in a state of feverish restlessness, while dangers are brewing South to our cherished boon, we content ourselves in wrapping ourselves round in a mantle of indifference, or encouraging one another to deridethemovements ' of our Southern rivals. A floating dock or graving clock, which as a commercial speculation would be indisputably lucrative, and which, even if uuremunerative in dividends would be fruitful in general results manifold beyond bare per centages, will afford subject for impractical discussion till its discussion will be too late. While efforts are being made in the proper direction, to win favour for. the rcWj *W_J»„b Wellington tor its port of call, and Melbourne for its terminus, no attempt is made by us to conciliate Victorian interests, or to bring that colony into more intimate relations with ourselves. A line of mail boats from the Manukau to Melbourne is an absolute necessity to a permanent continuance of our. mail route, as at present existing ; and the sooner that unavoidable adjunct is in some way provided, the sooner and the more certainly will the position of Auckland, relative to the transPacific traffic be defined. The suggestion lately made in the columns of our contemporary the Herald as to the opening of the passage from the waters of the Manukau to those of the Waitemata is one that we venture to say would not require much ventilation in any place save Auckland. That the tides of the eastern and western waters ebb and flow within one short mile of each other in the neighbourhood of our city ; that a ship canal could, with no engineering difficulty and at insignificant cost, connect the Tamaki inlet and Onehunga, giving passage for even the San Francisco steamers by a second Cook's Strait within sight of our wharves, is an idea, perhaps, too oppressive for our public spirit. May we not hope that with a stream of Yankees and Victorians flowing through our midst, the day may not be far distant when, instead of the stormy circuit and passage of the North Cape we see our Wongas and Nebraskas passing at easy steam through the farms arid gardens of Panmure and Ctahuhu.