It may be taken as proved that the present value of the ship is about £26,000. Mr. De Mattos gave, we understand, £27,000 for her, and he bought her by auction. The last sale gives nearly the same figures. If we assume that there are 10,000 tons of iron in her, we may also assume that if broken up it would not fetch more than £3 a ton at present rates; but even if we say £4, we have as a total but £40,000. To break the ship up would be a herculean task; we very much doubt if it could be done for the difference between £26,000 and £40,000; her engines would only sell for old iron, being entirely worthless for any other place than the foundry once they were taken out of her; as for her boilers, the less said about them the better. In one word, she would not pay to break up. On the other hand, by a comparatively moderate further outlay, she might be made the finest trading ship afloat. There are two harbors at all events into which she can always get, namely, Milford and Sydney. There are others, of course, but these will do; and the ship could trade between these two ports. By taking out her paddle engines, she would be relieved of a weight of 850 tons. The removal of her paddle engine boilers would further lighten her, and would give in addition an enormous stowage space. By using her both as a cargo and a passenger ship, the whole of the upper portion could be utilized for emigrants, let us say, and the lower decks for cargo, of which she could carry nearly, if not quite, 20,000 tons. She would possess the great advantage that, notwithstanding she was a cargo ship, she would be nearly, if not quite, as fast as any, save a few of the most recent additions to the Australian fleet. There is every reason to believe that she has been driven at 14 knots by about 6,000 horse power. We are inclined to think that the power has been overstated, and we have it on good authority that she has more than once attained a speed of 15 knots. Let us assume, however, that her speed is to be 13 knots, or about fifteen miles an hour. Assuming the power required to vary as the cube of the speed, if 6,000 horsepower gave 14 knots, then about 4,800 would give 13 knots--say 5,000 horse power. Now, good compound engines of this power ought not to burn more than 2 lb. per horse per hour, or say 4.5 tons per hour, or 108 tons a day. Allowing the trip to Australia to take forty days, we have 4,320 tons of coal--say 5,000 tons for the trip. The Etruria burns about this quantity in the run to New York and back. For each ton of coal burned in the Great Eastern about 15,000 tons of cargo and 3,000 passengers could be moved about 3-1/3 miles. There is, we need hardly say, nothing afloat which can compare in economy of fuel with this. Taken on another basis, we may compare her with an ordinary cargo boat. In such a vessel about 3,000 tons of grain can be moved at 9 knots an hour for 600 horse power--that is 5 tons of cargo per horse power.