The principal reasons put forward in favour of our old port were: that the Bristol Channel was navigable at all states of the tide and in all weathers; that there was good anchorage in the Kingroad; and that although Bristol was not quite so near to Barbadoes, the first island of call, as some of her rival ports, yet it admitted of quicker transmission of mails between London and the northern towns than any other English port. The arguments in favour of the Bristol port were not strong enough to induce the committee to report in its favour. From the "forties," when the American mail service was withdrawn from Bristol, no foreign or colonial mails left the port until the autumn of 1898, when Mr. Alfred Jones, the enterprising managing director of the firm of Messrs. Elder, Dempster & Co., made arrangements for carrying private ship mails from Avonmouth to Montreal by a weekly service of steamers. The Bristol merchants found it convenient to make use of this ship mail system for the conveyance of their invoices, bills of lading, and advices, as, by travelling in the same ship as the goods which they related to, their delivery in time to be of use in connection with the ship's load was ensured. The first vessel to carry such a ship mail was the s.s. _Montcalm_. When it was in anticipation at the Bristol Post Office that the ship mail service might be resumed in 1899 on the breaking up of the ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, there came a cablegram from the Canadian Government intimating that a contract had been entered into with Messrs. Elder, Dempster and Co.; and, heigh presto! Avonmouth at once became the port of departure and arrival of the steamers carrying the direct Canadian mails. The suddenness of the event naturally created quite a stir after Bristol had been so long waiting, and the mail services outwards and inwards were watched with close attention by the public. The first steamer to run under the new contract was the s.s. _Monterey_. She left Avonmouth on the 23rd July, but time had not admitted of arrangements being made for her to carry the mails from Avonmouth, which were therefore picked up at Queenstown. The s.s. _Ikbal_ took the next trip, leaving Avonmouth on the 30th July. The parcels from the whole of the kingdom, including Ireland, were circulated on Bristol, and made up here in direct mails for Montreal, Quebec, Hamilton, Kingston, Toronto, Winnipeg, Prince Edward Island, Hawaii, St. Pierre and Miquelon, Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Kobe, Nagasaki, and Yokohama. The notice to the Bristol Post Office was very short, but the necessary arrangements were smartly made to meet the emergency. Mr. Kislingbury, the divisional superintendent of the Great Western Railway, ever ready to heartily co-operate with the local Post Office, had a special tender placed in readiness for the reception of the mails at Temple Meads and they were despatched by the 9.50 a.m. train to Avonmouth. On the part of the Dock