In 1852 there was a bimonthly service from Valparaiso to Panama, where the line had a connection across the isthmus with the Atlantic navigation. In 1855 the Panama Railway was opened, and the company’s activity was greatly increased. In the following year also the company adopted the compound type of engines, which was only just brought out, being, it is stated, the first steam-ship proprietary to do so for ocean traffic, and influenced probably by the immense saving thereby made in fuel consumption. Contracts were made in 1848 by the United States Government with George Law, an American financier and shipowner, and his associates, to carry the American mails from New York to Aspinwall on the Isthmus of Panama, and with C. H. Aspinwall to convey the mails on the Pacific side from Panama to San Francisco and ports beyond. This was the inauguration of the Pacific Mail Line, and its first steamer, the _California_, sailed from New York in October of that year for San Francisco. The gold rush was at its height and the demand for the steam-ships was so great that she was quickly followed by the _Pacific_ and _Oregon_, the latter built in 1845. All three were wooden paddle-steamers about 200 feet long and of nearly 1060 tonnage, and made good passages round Cape Horn. With the arrival of the three steamers on the west coast, the transisthmian route was adopted for passengers and light merchandise, and the _Ohio_ and _Georgia_, which Law had built, carried, in 1849, the first passengers by steam-ship to the isthmus from New York.[76] [76] Marvin’s “American Merchant Marine.” When the Pacific Mail Company established a competing line between New York and Chagres, Law placed an opposition line of four steamers on the Pacific. In 1851 the rivalry was ended by his purchasing their steamers on the Atlantic side, and selling to them his new line from Panama to San Francisco. Twenty-nine fine steamers, of a total of 38,000 tons, were built in ten years for the two branches of the Californian trade, and the Pacific Mail Company, representing an amalgamation of the Law and Aspinwall interests, assumed the position, which it has retained ever since, of the leading American steam-ship company in the Pacific. The company is asserted to have carried 175,000 passengers to the “golden west” in that decade and to have brought back gold to the value of forty million pounds sterling.