A very ordinary trip now‐a‐days for those rounding the world is that from San Francisco to China, calling at Japan on the way. The steamships of the Pacific Mail Company are those principally employed, and a voyage on such a vessel as the _China_, which is one of the crack vessels of the service, is one almost invariably of pleasure. The _China_ is a steamship of over 4,000 tons, and cost 800,000 dollars, or, roughly, £160,000 sterling. She will often carry 2,000 tons of tea on a return voyage, to say nothing of perhaps from five to fifteen hundred Chinamen. A traveller(14) already referred to states, that with only 580 on board half a ton of rice had to be served out daily, with a modicum of meat and vegetables. One of the leading cargoes on the outward trip from San Francisco is corpses and coffins, few Chinamen being ever buried out of their native land. In the splendid and roomy saloons of these steamers there are always Chinese waiters, who are said to be most obliging, and noiseless in their motions. Negro waiters are civil and assiduous enough in their attendance, but are always fussy; in this respect “John” is a great improvement on “Sambo.” “An additional proof,” said a leading journal “of the new vitality infused into that long inert mass, the Chinese Empire, has just been supplied from San Francisco,” and the writer goes on to describe a new development of their mercantile enterprise. It seems that there has been in existence for some time past an association termed the Chinese Merchants’ Steamship Company, the stockholders of which are wealthy native merchants and mandarins, who own many coasting steamers. The company is now about to start a line from China to the Sandwich Islands and San Francisco, and it is not improbable that the Chinese emigrants may prefer these steamers to any other. The manager of this Celestial “P. and O.” is one Tong Ken Sing, a shrewd native of Singapore; and, continues the writer, “under the enlightened control of this man of his epoch, who is equally at home with tails and taels, the company is sure to succeed.”