The History of the Post Office in British North America

by William Smith

The conveyance from Panama to Victoria offered greater difficulties. The connection between British mail steamers arriving at Colon and the United States steamers running from Panama to San Francisco, was so faulty, that the mails would have to lie at Panama as long as two weeks before they were taken forward. The passage to San Francisco occupied two weeks, and from this point to Victoria from four to five days. The delay at the isthmus was usually avoided by taking the steamer from England to New York, from whence a line of steamers ran to Colon in close connection with the Pacific steamers from Panama. By the latter route the journey from London to Victoria was made in about forty-five days.

But the important consideration with the treasury was the very considerable cost. The preference of the government was for an all-British conveyance. This could be arranged by having a steamer, subsidized by the government, take the mails from the Cunard vessels at either Halifax or New York, and carry them to Colon, and by providing other vessels under its control to make the conveyance from Panama to Victoria. The enormous cost of these services precluded the adoption of this scheme, until the colony had grown to an extent that it could bear, at least, part of the cost. It was estimated that the steamer on the Atlantic coast would call for an outlay of £25,000 a year, while the Pacific line would cost not less than £100,000 a year.

A solution of the difficulty was found through the good offices of the United States government. There was a service carried on twice a week between St. Louis, Missouri and San Francisco. The route was 2,765 miles in length, and it was covered by four-horse coaches with great regularity in twenty-two days.

This service, the United States government placed at the disposal of the British post office for the exchange of its correspondence with its distant colony. The mails on their arrival at San Francisco were delivered to the British consul, who arranged for their transmission to their destination.

At the best, the isolation of the new settlement was extreme. There had been a newspaper in Victoria since June 1858. It was published weekly, and for two weeks out of three, its columns were confined to purely local news. The third issue presented the appearance of a modern newspaper. The steamer "Eliza Anderson" had arrived from Olympia, bringing with it the despatches from San Francisco, containing news from all parts of the world.

How belated the news was may be gathered from a glance over one of the issues. The issue of March 9 contained news from San Francisco, not later than February 8, and from St. Louis, the latest date was February 5. As St. Louis was within the eastern telegraph system, the papers from the city contained despatches from all parts of the United States and Canada. It was observed that among the items of news was the arrival of the steamer "Bohemia" at New York, with the Liverpool newspapers of January 18. So that under ordinary circumstances, news from England was fifty days old before it reached the public in Victoria.

The construction of a telegraph line to the Pacific in the autumn of 1861, and the extension of the lines of the California State Telegraphic Company to Portland, Oregon, in 1864, did much to relieve the situation, so far as concerned news important enough to be sent by telegraph to the newspapers in San Francisco.

But the ordinary news from Canada did not reach Victoria by telegraph, and the length of the delay in the transmission of news from Canada by letter may be seen from the fact that the British Colonist of November 11, 1864, contained a newsletter from Canada, dated September 30—six weeks earlier. Governor Kennedy in his annual report to the colonial secretary on the state of the colony in 1864 observed that "expensive and defective postal and other communications are the great bar to progress, and reflect but little credit on the two great nations—England and America. A Times newspaper costs fourpence postage, and that for a book is entirely prohibitory."

Arrangements of a simple character were made for the conveyance of letters into the sections occupied by the miners. In November 1858, governor Douglas reported that the men at the mines—nearly all of whom were on the course of the Fraser river—numbered 10,500. He also stated that he had arranged a postal system on a small scale, which provided for the wants of the country, at an expenditure which was fully covered by the receipts.

The earliest letter delivery in this region was carried on by the express companies, whose operations were extended from California to British Columbia, with the migration of the miners to the newly-discovered gold districts. This mode of delivery is described by a British naval officer, who spent four years in the country, as one of the safest imaginable. He states that "so great is his faith in them that he would trust anything in even that most insecure country (California) in an envelope bearing the stamp of the Wells Fargo and Company's express."[324]