Note 6 — APPENDIX, No. III.—PACIFIC OCEAN.

Footnote 6: Whenever steamers are appointed to carry the mails from Falmouth to Barbadoes, the arrival of the packet at that island will be so regular, that Jamaica might be made (should this be considered advantageous) the headquarters, as it were, for the steamers in that quarter of the world. Four would then be sufficient for the work between Barbadoes and Vera Cruz; two to run between Jamaica and Vera Cruz, by the Havannah, and two between Jamaica and Barbadoes, by St. Thomas. The latter two would be each fifteen days at sea monthly, and the former two seventeen days, exclusive of partial stoppages; so that there would be abundance of time for rest and repairs. Further, under such circumstances, the packet with the European return mails would have time to run through the islands and pick up all the mails; meeting, on the second day after her departure from Trinidad, and on the ninth after reaching Barbadoes, at St. Lucia, the steamer from Guiana, with the Guiana, Tobago, and Barbadoes return mails; and proceeding onward through all the islands, to the northward and westward, St. Thomas and Porto Rico included, pass from that island through the Mona Passage, and call at Jacmel for a mail, reaching Jamaica in fourteen days. From thence starting without delay, and going by St. Jago de Cuba and Cape Nichola, leave the latter place on the seventeenth day for Fayal, exactly in the same time that it is calculated it could do under the other arrangement. But such an arrangement would render it difficult, perhaps impracticable, to get up the Laguayra mail to St. Thomas in time, it having only ten days for that purpose; and at the same time an additional expense for coals, at least for three days each packet or voyage (1800 tons, 2250l. yearly) would be required, being the time taken between Jamaica and Cape Nichola Mole.(Back)