These steamers found nothing ready to receive them in the Pacific. The Company was compelled to construct large workshops and foundries for their repair, and now have at Benicia a large and excellent establishment where they can easily construct a marine engine. They had also to build their own Dry Dock; for that of the Government at Mare Island was not ready until 1854. Theirs has ever been most useful to the United States, as it furnished the only accommodations of that class in the Pacific. They had also to make shore establishments at Panama, San Francisco, and Astoria, which, with coal depots, etc., were extremely costly, owing to materials having to be transported so far, and labor at the time being so high. The price of labor in California at all times depends on the profits which can be made by digging gold, and the prices paid for this species of labor have ever been enormous. Beyond this most unusual price of labor along the Pacific seaboard, the coals which they have used, whether from the Eastern States or from England, have been invariably shipped around Cape Horn, and have never cost less than twenty dollars per ton. For a large portion of the time the Company had to pay thirty dollars per ton for coal, and in one instance fifty dollars. Coal, like all other provisions of the steamers, has generally been purchased from those who sent it out on speculation, and took all the advantages of the peculiar market. Twelve dollars per ton is a low price for freight to California or Panama. In addition to this, the cost price of the coal, the handling, the wastage, and the insurance, will amount to about eight dollars per ton, making it never less than twenty dollars delivered. I have frequently seen coals sell even in Rio de Janeiro, which is but about one third of the distance from us, at eighteen to twenty-four dollars per ton. The nine steamers running consume about 35,000 tons of coal annually. If the vessels transporting it be of 1,000 tons each, it will employ something near thirty-five of these vessels at profitable rates, in this one item of their business alone. Such expenditures are not necessary to any other steam company in the world. The British lines in the Indian Ocean and the China Seas are supplied with domestic coal which comes at very reasonable prices, and is shipped but a short distance.