An attempt is being made to prove that the quickest mail route from Australia to London is through the United States. From Melbourne to London, by way of San Francisco and New York, a distance of 15,265 miles, will have been covered in the record-breaking time of thirty days, providing the steamship Umbria, which sailed on Saturday from New York, reaches Liverpool on schedule time, on the 16th of November. This supreme effort to break the previous record of thirty and one-half days from Melbourne is being made to prove that the Australian mails be taken through New York more quickly than through the Suez Canal and much more quickly than by the all-water route. The mails started on their journey on the Lith of October, aboard the steamship Ventura, which left Melbourne on that date, bound for San Francisco, by way of Sydney, Auckland, and Honolulu. From Melbourne to San Francisco, the distance is about 9,200 miles; from Syd-it is about 8,500 and from Honolulu (000 miles. During the trip the Ventura made an average sneed of 400 knots a way, and on the 4th of November she anchored in American waters, after having made her usual stops on the way. At San Francisco the mails were hurriedly brought ashore, placed on_ the regular mail trains of the Southern Pac fic and then run over the Union Pacific, the Burlington, and the Lake Shore, and subsequently over the New York Central to New York City.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.