The contractors must deposit £10,000 in cash, and a guarantee of £10,000 additional, with the Minister of Finance of Canada as security that the contract will be faithfully carried into effect. Twelve months having passed since the signing of the contract, without any substantial progress having been made towards its fulfilment, a new agreement was entered into in April last whereby the Government granted Messrs. Peterson and Tate an extension of time, and introduced several important changes into the contract. Under the new arrangement the contractors were required to have a steamship company incorporated by May 30th, 1898, with a substantial capital of $6,250,000, to have contracts signed with ship-builders at that date for four steamships, and to have two of them actually under construction. The 1st of May, 1900, was named as the time when the four steamers are to be ready to go on the route and commence a regular weekly service. The preliminary conditions attached to the contract appear to have been complied with, and a company has been incorporated under the name of the “Canadian Royal Mail Steamship Company, Limited;” but grave fears are entertained that the necessary funds may not be forthcoming, and that the long-expected fast service may be indefinitely delayed. Sir Sandford Fleming, who has made a study of this subject, and published his opinions respecting it in a series of pamphlets, is not sanguine as to the success of the undertaking. “The conditions imposed by nature,” he says, “are unfavourable for rapid transit by the St. Lawrence route, and any attempts to establish on this route a line of fast transatlantic steamships to rival those running to and from New York would result in disappointment.” In the event of such a service being instituted, Sir Sandford assumes that it would be almost exclusively for the use of passengers, and suggests that the route should be from Loch Ryan, on the Wigtonshire coast of Scotland, to North Sydney, in Cape Breton. The distance between these points being only 2,160 knots, the voyage might be made in 4½ days, while 30 hours more would land mails and passengers in Montreal by railway. In this way the average time from London to Montreal would be reduced to 6 days and 6 hours—36 hours less than the time usually occupied between Montreal and London _via_ New York and Queenstown.