The chairman of the improvement committee, or whatever it was called, came to see me to get me to undertake the floating of the necessary loan. I suggested a number of improvements, such as fire-engines, better office buildings, better paved streets, and new gas-works. All of these suggestions were accepted, and I forecast the floating of the loan. They got the money in London, and Melbourne was remodeled, so far as its appearance was concerned, and was finally made one of the most attractive cities in the British colonies. It now has a population of half a million. CHAPTER XIII A VOYAGE TO CHINA 1855 I have already referred to my purpose of going to Japan to establish a branch business there. This idea came to me in Australia, after Commodore Perry had opened the country to foreigners. It has always been my desire to be first on the ground, and I saw that Japan offered the greatest possible opportunities for trade of all sorts. I had fixed upon Yokohama as the place in which to open our branch house. The rapid development of that city since then, under new conditions, and the tremendous increase of its trade with Europe and America, as well as with India, China, and Australasia, have well justified my early judgment. I knew we could acquire great influence in the world of commerce, and become, perhaps, the greatest shipping house of the globe, with branch houses at Boston, Liverpool, Melbourne, and Yokohama. This is as good a place as any to give the reasons for the failure of these ambitious plans. I had gradually worked out the whole program, giving to it hours and days of careful and painstaking examination. I felt that the scheme was absolutely safe from every point of view. It was big and almost grandiose; but I felt it was sure to result in vast fortunes, in the building up of a trade that the world had never before conceived or dreamed of, and in the development of American commerce. In fact, I see now that I was more than half a century ahead of J. Pierpont Morgan. I should have formed a great shipping and navigation business that would have dwarfed anything else of the kind in the world. My plan was not limited to a few lines of ships between Europe and New York. It was not confined to an Atlantic ferry. I foresaw, as I fancied, American ships dominating the trade of all oceans. I saw the American merchant flag in every port of the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans, and doing the carrying trade of the world. I had some such vague idea when I introduced the fast clipper service between Boston, New York, and San Francisco, and, again, when I organized the fast sailing-ship service between Boston and Australia. But I did not see it all clear before me, as I saw it in Australia. The Orient had cleared my eyes.