THE PENINSULAR AND ORIENTAL.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 383, 10 July 1889, Page 5

THE PENINSULAR AND ORIENTAL.

We are indebted to Messrs Cruickshank find Co., bhe Auckland agents ot tho P. and 0. Company, for a copy of the Company s Pocket Book for 1888. The work, which comprises about 300 pages, including sixteen maps and many illustrations, is in itself a staking evidence ot the importance and extensive character of iho operations of this splendid steamship Company. Tho book opens with an interesting sketch of tho history of tho Company, which was founded in 1837, and upou tho occasion of its Jubileo two years ago celebrated it by building four steamships of «,n eater size than any which the Compnnv had previously built— the Victoria, Britannia, Oceana, and Arcadia, amounting together to about 26,000 tons, and costing bub little short of i'Boo,ooo. Tho contiust between these leviathans of 6,362 tonp and 7,000 horec power each and the William Fawcctt of 206 tons, tho Royal Tar of 308 tons, and the Jupiter of 610 tons, which were tho liist \esselt. acquired by the Company, leoresents half a century's progross in the art of shipbuilding, Tho Company's ileeb now numbers 54 ships, with a total tonnage oi 209,872, or an average tonnage of 3,887 tor each ship. The levcnue of the Company in 1887 was L"2,225,665, and it spends neaily halt a million sterling per annum on coais aione. Tho average dividend tor tho past ten yearo has been C 6 12s per cent. The paid-up captial ot the Company is C2,<)00,000. The dcsciiptivc accounts given in the book of tho ehiet points of interest upon the Company's l outos are extremely inteiesbing. The story ot tho Sue/, Canal is toLi by M. do Let=S6ps himseit and by Thomas Sutherland. From thi& paper wo leain that the Khedive's shares w hich Lord Beaconstield bought lor M, 000,000 arc now worth JCIO.OOO.OCO. Under Mv Goschen's scheme the dividends tiom the^e shares are to be used in paying oil tho cost of fortifsing coaling stations and ports, which it is estimated will amount to €2,300.000. At present tho work oi widen- \ ing the canal from 72 to 120 feet and deepening it 20 inches throughout its whole length is proceeding actively. Tho Company.--- plant engaged on this work cost JL'6OO,OOO The statistics of shipping for 1887 show that of the 3,137 vessels, ot 5,1)03,024 net, tonnage, that passed through i the canal, 2,330 vessels, of 4,516,772 tons, were Btilitb. France comes next with 185 \essels, of 384,] 24 tons. England therefore contributes 76} per cent, of the canal traliie. Among the other descriptive papers are : — "Egypt,"' by Stanley-Poole. a capital account of the modem condition ot the land of the Pharaohs ; " Notes of a Tour Thiough In dip," by Sir Edwin Arnold, whose name alone is sufficient to guarantee its excellence ; "China,"' by Sn Thomas Wade, the besc brief account of the Mongolian Empire we ha\e ever lead ; a chatty paper on Japan, by Henry W. Lucy : " What a Tourist May See in a Six Months' Tour Thiough Austialasia ;" this is the lea&t satisfactory part of the book, and wholly fail* to do justice to the subject, <\s the following misleading allusion to the Hot Lake dis trict ot New Zealand will sufficiently indicate: "'He (the tourist) sviil ha,\ c cause to regret that he cannot now visit the Hot Sprinord and wonderful petiitied terraces, which wore destioyed during my last tiip to bha Antipodes, but which I saw in all tneir clorj 1 - twenty years a^o ; yet if he time-j his visit rightly, so a& to loach New Zealand during the dry season, he will be able to include Miifoid Sound in the South, one of the sights, if not the leinnining piiticipal M^ht and purposp ot a visit to New Zealand." That the tourist " cannot now vi\it the Hot Spungy and wondeiful pefciiheJ ten aces'' ot New Zealand i^, indeed, news to us, as it u ill be to the thousands of people who do visit them cveiy jeai. It is tiue that the ' two finest teiraces — the pink and 1 white — have been destroyed, but if the touiist cannot still find enough to interest and astonish him in tho hot springs, geysei?, mud volcanoes, sulphur pools and teirace formations which still remain in all their force and beauty by the hundred between Potorua and Tongariro, he must indeed be haul to plcate. As Australasia contributes no small paib of the Company's revenue, wo would iccommend bhe directeis to get this section more ade- < quately treated. Included in the book aie a large number of -\aluable tables — A time dial indicating the diifeienccs in time all lound the wcild, the varying seasons trade and population, , weights, measures and eunency, tides-, livers, winds, distances by sea and rail, flaics of diileient nations, etc., etc. Altogether the book is the most complete travelleis' rtide mecum we have yet had the pleasuie of reviewing.—" Auckland Star, ' July 6.