About the period when the West India Steam Line was in course of formation, another company, destined to surpass it in importance, had obtained from the British Government a charter for establishing “steam navigation along the shores of North and South America in the Pacific Ocean,” as well as between those shores and China, the Australasian Colonies, and certain ports in the West Indies and in the Atlantic Ocean. To establish a line of steam-ships for the purpose of carrying on efficiently the large and valuable, but hitherto undeveloped, commerce within the area named was indeed a bold undertaking, and one requiring extensive and varied knowledge, with a large amount of experience and judicious management combined with the necessary amount of capital. These various requisites were not, however, readily obtained at a period when ocean steam navigation was comparatively in its infancy, and were rendered still more difficult by the knowledge that the endeavours of the original projectors of steam navigation on the shores of the Pacific had not been attended with success. Indeed, the first of those undertakings proved most unfortunate, and was, also, accompanied by a good deal of romance. [Sidenote: First steamer in the Pacific, 1825.] So early as 1825, when the struggles among the republics of the South Pacific for supremacy were at their height, a few merchants resident in Panama formed themselves into an association for the purpose of trading along those shores, but they had so many difficulties to overcome that a long time elapsed ere they could obtain the required capital. The first steamer on the Pacific coast was a small craft named the _Telica_, commanded and owned by a Spaniard named Mitrovitch; but his career and that of the vessel under his charge was a short and melancholy one. In a fit of despair at his want of success, with some further annoyance from the complaints by his passengers, caused chiefly by delay, and his inability to find a sufficient supply of fuel, he fired his pistol into a barrel of gunpowder, blowing up his vessel in the harbour of Guayaquil, and destroying himself and all on board except one man. An occurrence of this lamentable nature, though it happened ten or fifteen years previously, would, in most cases, have destroyed, for many years subsequently, any attempts, by means of steamers, to trade between Valparaiso and Panama, had not a gentleman, then resident in Guayaquil and familiar with the trade of the coast, taken up the business with the determination to carry it through at all hazards. [Sidenote: Mr. Wheelwright.]