No. 5.
Mr. Hanna
to. Mr. Bayard.
Buenos Ayres, December 12, 1887. (Received January 17, 1888.)
Sir: As new proof of the vast carrying trade this growing country has attracted, Messrs. Baring Bros., of London, have recently become extensive shareholders of the Italian line called The Veloce Steam-ship Company, running between Buenos Ayres and the southern coast of Europe.
Its business has become so profitable that the service, hitherto monthly only, will soon become weekly, or nearly so. The Duchessa Di Genova of this reconstructed company has just reached this port with 1,037 passengers, and made the run out from Naples in eighteen days.
[Page 7]The Duehessa Di Geneva is a magnificent steamer of modern pattern and highest speed. The fleet of the old company, before its recent reorganization with the Baring Brothers as its largest owners, was quite large, but now by the addition of the Duchessa Di Genova and the Sud America, the Duea Di Galliera and Vittoria soon to follow, will be immense.
Soon they will touch at Lisbon, Portugal, which run they expect to make regularly in twelve days, and thence connecting by rail, over the continent, with the German Lloyd at Havre. It is thought the passage to the United States may be made in twenty-two or twenty-three days.
This movement seems to be quite an emphatic rebuke to the tardy neglect of United States enterprise.
Even the Argentine Republic, only one-twentieth part as large as our country in population, will soon launch a monthly line of steamers from Buenos Ayres to New York, carrying its heroic little flag, in fulfillment of a commercial need, long existing, but hitherto slighted by our great metropolis.
I have, etc.,