Whilst at Brindisi, it is impossible to omit reference to its future with respect to the conveyance of our Eastern mails to and from Alexandria. This subject is divisible into two portions—conveyance of the fast and conveyance of the heavy mails. These mails go at present respectively _viâ_ Marseilles and _viâ_ Southampton. A contract now in course of completion between the Post Office and the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company is about to bind the nation to the Southampton route for _twelve years_. It admits, however, of the transfer of the fast mails _viâ_ Marseilles being likely to take place at a period more or less proximate. If the reader will be so good as to refer to Appendix No. 3 in this volume, he will see a memorandum in which the course of the Eastern mails, both fast and heavy, is indicated, and the vast difference between the time that letters take in their conveyance by the two routes—that is, _viâ_ Southampton and _viâ_ Marseilles. This difference will continue until all mails, both fast and heavy, are carried (as eventually they will be) by Brindisi. The following table exhibits the relative distances between London and Alexandria by the three routes. The computation is in English miles. Viâ. Land. Water. Total. Southampton 78 3,353 3,431 Marseilles 833 1,701 2,534 Brindisi 1,477 954 2,431 There is therefore a less distance _viâ_ Brindisi than _viâ_ Marseilles of 103 miles; than _viâ_ Southampton of 1,000 miles; but, as Captain Tyler says—“Apart from contingencies, which must be always greater by sea than by land conveyance, the speed on a railway is usually double that at sea,” hence the captain strongly recommends the Brindisi route, not only on account of its being the shortest between London and Alexandria, but likewise because the land portion exceeds that _viâ_ Marseilles by 644 miles, and that _viâ_ Southampton by 1,399 miles. As a question of time, the computation made is as follows:—Southampton fifteen days, Marseilles eight days one hour, Brindisi six days seven hours.[143] The contrast between the weight of the Eastern mails carried in 1850 and at the present time is marvellous. Then the annual number of boxes despatched, the average weight of each of which was about 60 lbs., was under 2,500; in 1867 it is at the rate of 25,152. It is true that since 1858 the Australian mails are conveyed by the overland route—they are only despatched once a month, both _viâ_ Southampton and _viâ_ Marseilles, but then they form nearly two-thirds of the total weight of the mails; they swell the number of boxes from the average of 524 to 1,347.