extent the dangers of Cape Horn, although equal dangers might be encountered on any part of the voyage. But besides the question of nautical skill and individual daring, as a commercial undertaking the sending such steamers round to California was a very bold speculation. Their value in New York is about a hundred thousand dollars, and to take them round to San Francisco costs about thirty thousand more. Insurance is, of course, out of the question (I do not think 99 per cent. would insure them in this country from Dover to Calais); so the owners had to play a neck-or-nothing game. Their enterprise was in most cases duly rewarded. I only know of one instance--though doubtless others have occurred--in which such vessels did not get round in safety: it was an old Long Island Sound boat; she was rotten before ever she left New York, and foundered somewhere about the Bermudas, all hands on board escaping in the boats. The profits of the first few steamers which arrived out were of course enormous; but, after a while, competition was so keen that for some time cabin fare between San Francisco and Sacramento was only one dollar; a ridiculously small sum to pay, in any part of the world, for being carried in such boats two hundred miles in ten hours; but, in California at that time, the wages of the common deck hands on board these same boats were about a hundred dollars a-month; and ten dollars were there, to the generality of men, a sum of much less consequence than ten shillings are here. These low fares did not last long, however; the owners of steamers came to an understanding, and the average rate of fare from San Francisco to Sacramento was from five to eight dollars. I have only alluded to the one-dollar fares for the purpose of giving an idea of the competition which existed in such a business as “steamboating,” which requires a large capital; and from that it may be imagined what intense rivalry there was among those engaged in less important lines of business, which engrossed their whole time and labor, and required the employment of all the means at their command.