Although the _New World_ was one of the largest and most magnificent vessels employed on the Hudson, she was surpassed in speed by the _Daniel Drew_, which has attained the extraordinary rate of 25 statute miles an hour without assistance from either wind or tide. From my own knowledge, I can confirm the accuracy of this statement, having made a passage in her from New York to Albany. To persons who, like myself, familiar with nautical affairs, have made their study the business as well as the pleasure of life, no more enjoyable sensation could have been afforded than the rapid movement of this vessel. Like some “thing of life” she noiselessly cut through the water with no curling wave or struggling foam at her bows, throwing aside only a silvery jet of the fluid over which she appeared to skim. Nor was the action of her machinery less worthy of admiration. After the first half-dozen strokes of the paddle-wheels when started, their pace was so smooth and rapid that sound and vibration alike were hardly perceptible. But, though the Americans have surpassed all other nations in the steamers hitherto produced for their lake and river navigation, they have not as yet sent forth any steam-ships so well adapted for ocean navigation as those of Great Britain; indeed, almost every attempt made by them to compete successfully with British vessels so engaged has been a commercial failure. In their distant coasting lines (what a misnomer to describe the voyage between New York and San Francisco as “coasting trade”!) they have, however, for many years employed some of the finest steam-ships afloat. In fact, when the district of California was almost a wilderness, the merchants of New York started a line of steamers to trade with it, and were thus, in a great measure, the means, though at a heavy loss to themselves, of developing its marvellous natural resources. [Sidenote: Pacific Steamship Company started, 1847.] The Pacific Mail Steam-ship Company, formed in 1847, is much the largest maritime undertaking yet organised, as distinctly American and under the flag of the United States, and their first steamer, the _California_, which left New York on the 6th of October, 1848, was the first to bear the American flag to the Pacific Ocean. To form a steam-ship establishment 4000 to 5000 or, as it was at that time, 13,000 miles from home, where the necessary supplies could only be obtained with the greatest difficulty in a country wholly new, was an undertaking of no ordinary hazard and difficulty. Nevertheless, there appeared to be ingredients for success sufficient to encourage the projectors to increase their fleet with extraordinary rapidity soon after they commenced operations; and there were at that period no steam-ships afloat finer than the _Panama_, _Oregon_, _Tennessee_, _Golden Gate_, and _Columbia_, which followed the _California_ in rapid succession. [Sidenote: Cost of establishing it.]