THE SAN FRANCISCO MAIL SERVICE.

Kumara Times, Issue 558, 11 July 1878, Page 2

THE SAN FRANCISCO MAIL SERVICE.

A proposed change in the route of the Californian mail service has been mooted in the columns of both the Sydney' Morning Herald and the Melbourne Argus, which is fraught with no slight consequences in several ways. It is suggested that when the present contract expires, a more direct route than the present will he adopted across the Pacific, the effect of which would be to shorten the distance by over 1000 miles, and save five days, at the expense of avoiding the call at Auckland, and that at Honolulu, both of which lie out of the direct route, and making a call at New Caledonia, or one of the

Pacific Islands instead. The writer in the Sydney Morning Herald hints that one of the great American Kailway Companies may step.in and swallow np the Pacific Mail S.S. Co., and undertake the through contract for the delivery of the mails in London (the present contract is carried out hy the P.M.S.S. Co., when they deposit the mails hi San Francisco). Such a coup is just in keeping with-the tactics of the Central Pacific Pail road Co., which not only has its section of the great trans-continental railway of America, has not only bought up all the.available passes over the Rocky Mountains and so rendered opposition impossible, but also virtually, possesses a great part of the street tramway car property of San Franeisco, as well as the Southern Pacific Railway Co., a line of steamships trading from San Francisco to China, and other properties too ' numerous for me to i emember.