West Coast Times. MONDAY SEPTEMBER 3, 1866. MONTHLY SUMMARY.

West Coast Times, Issue 295, 3 September 1866, Page 5

West Coast Times. MONDAY SEPTEMBER 3, 1866. MONTHLY SUMMARY.

West Coast Times Office, Monday, September 3, 1866. The English June Mails via Galle and Melbourne, for the Southern Provinces of iSew Zealand, reached the • Bluff (Southland) by the steamship South Australian on the 19th ult. (Sunday ) We published in our issue of the following morning a telegraphic summary of the intelligence, and in a second edition issued later in the day, furnished our subscribers with a fuller epitome of news, exhausting in brief the contents of the English papers. Our ordinary mail dates by this oppor- * tunity were to tl c 26th June ; but these were supplemented by telegrams received by the Anglo-Indian line to the 16th July, thus placing us in possession of the stirring incidents of the German-Italian war. By the subsequent arrival at Wellington of the New Zealand and Panama Company's mail steamship Kaikoura, we received files of English papers to the 2nd July, and American news to the 16'h July. • The punctuality with which the Rakaia and the Kaikoura, the pioneer boats of the New Panama contract line, have fulfilled their engagements — under more than the ordinary circumstances of disadvantage that belong to the commencement of a new ocean mail service — has afforded the highest satisfaction to the colonists of New Zealand ; and the advantages offered by the new line are beginning to be well appreciated by Australian correspondents and travellers. For the present ,yre must be content to receive our

latest telegraphic intelligence from the old world by way of the Suez route. But the opportunity now for the first time afforded, of prompt and regular communication with the States of North and South Aineiica, will prove of infinite value to the traders of the neighboring colonies, and tend to the rapid development of the commercial relations that have been for some time past growing between Australia and the Pacific States of the American continent. How much that commerce )jas hitherto been impeded by the want of adequate facilities of communication, may be inferred from the fact that American letters for Australia forwarded through the Post Office, have hitherto been sent to Southampton, there to be made up in the outgoing English mails. We are glad to learn that American merchants are beginning to visit New Zealand and Australia by the new line of steamers, with a view to the promotion of commerce between tho several countries connected by the new route, and do not doubt that the most import- v ant consequences will result from the opening up of the Panama service. Our last summary for Europe was despatched via Melbourne and Suez, by the Gothenburg, which left on the 14th August. We publish the present resume of news for transmission via Panama by the Rakaia, which leaves Wellington on Saturday next, transshipping mails and passengers from the Otago, which is appointed to sail from the roadstead to : day. The present summary of the West Coast Times covers, therefore, an interval of considerably less than a month. We shall, for the future, continue to avail ourselves of the opportunity of preparing a digest of intelligence for transmission by both the mail routes now open. The arrival of the Gothenburg and Otago, steamers, from Melbourne place us in possession of much later aud important intercolonial news, and by the Keera, from Dunedin, we have Otago papers to the 28th ult., containing, amongst other items of intelligence, a narrative of the escape of two desperate culprits from the Dunedin gaol, and the death, of one of them at the hands of the constabtdary.

The details of the month's history will be fouud ranged under their usual headings.