Having frankly stated the difference of opinion on this subject among the associates in this enterprise, it is proper to say that a route nationalized by a public contract is the true official expression of the company’s opinion, and the one which is now before the department. In conclusion on this point, it is respectfully suggested that this route is to be one of the great inter-oceanic routes of Atlantic, California, and Asiatic travel; that this enterprise may be fully developed by the present administration of our government without expense in its initial operations, but mainly by a prudent forbearance and official approbation, and by an order to carry such mail matter as our citizens may choose to send by it. The enterprise is emphatically a southern and western one; although originated by Pennsylvanians, yet its vitality is due to New Orleans and southern influence, as the very numerous memorials on the files of the department or Congress, and signed by southern and western senators and members, will attest. The steamer Texas, which has been performing the Gulf service during the last summer, has carried a large amount of specie into New Orleans, (at the rate of one million and a quarter per annum;) and soon as the specie and express wagons of this company are fully at work, millions of dollars will flow into the New Orleans mint from the gold placers and silver mines of Mexico now being worked by American and Mexican combined skill. _Of the practicability of the route._—The direct mail route runs from Vera Cruz, by the way of Orizava, Cordova, Puebla, Matamoras, Chietla, Mitapec, Kalcozotitlan, Chilapa, Tixtla, to Acapulco, with branches from Puebla up to Mexico and via Cuernavaca. This road was called by Humboldt the “_Asiatic road_,” as indicative of the maritime commerce of Spain; _and is the oldest road on the continent of America_. This route is no new thing, as many suppose, but the whole enterprise is but a recast of one developed long before our country had its name or a place among the nations of the earth. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been received by the government of Old Spain, transported over this road, in the interchange of productions between the flotas of Spain and the galleons of the Indies, and millions of American commerce are yet to be rolled over it in the progress of American enterprise. The distance direct (as will be seen by the annexed itinerary) from Vera Cruz to Acapulco is 404 miles, and via the city of Mexico 517. Colonel Ramsey has since shortened this distance to under 390 miles, and it will be reduced to less than 350. Over this road the materials and machinery for the vast coffee and sugar plantations of Mexico have to be transported, and these plantations for magnitude and productions are almost unequalled.