This magnificent steam-ship, whose arrival at Adelaide and Melbourne has been already reported in our columns, entered the heads of Port Jackson on Wednesday morning having made a brilliant run from Port Phillip in 59 hours (including a stoppage of the engines for nearly two hours during a heavy fog off Wilson's Promontory) She brings about 200 passengers, together with about �60,000 in specie, heavy mails, and cargo, from England, Adelaide, and Melbourne. She brings no report further than having spoken to H.M.S. Vulcan 300 miles E. of King George's Sound on the 6th ult.
The Cleopatra left Plymouth on the 7th of September, and, like her predecessors on the great oceanic steam-line, erroneous calculations as to coaling caused a protracted voyage. Her detentions at Madeira, St. Vincent, Ascension, the Cape, Adelaide, and Melbourne, involved a delay of 30 days, in so far as Sydney is concerned.
We have already published several descriptions of this noble vessel, and we are bound to say that our English and Scotch contemporaries from whom we have quoted have not, as has been sometimes their wont, at all exaggerated her magnificent proportions, nor her exquisite internal arrangements. She was built by Messrs. Denny, Brothers, of Dumbarton, and her engines provided by Messrs. Tulloch and Denny, of the same town. Her length is 220 feet, her beam 32 feet, her depth 20 feet. Her tonnage is 1800 tons, with engines of 250 horse power. She has sleeping berths for 400 persons, exclusive of the officers and crew, and the arrangements in this department have every reference to the comfort of the passengers Her gorgeously ornamented saloon for the first-class passengers, her commodious and well appointed salon-a-manger for the second class - in a word, every department of her domestic economy justifies all that has been published in her praise before, in these and other columns of the British and colonial press.
There is one point in connection with the Cleopatra's arrival here to which it will be our duty to refer more in detail when the arrangement of which we are about to speak is more fully matured. We understand that, already, it is contemplated by certain of our merchants to make an offer to her owners (a representative of whom has arrived by her), with the view of placing her immediately on the line between Sydney and Panama, and so to be first in that field which America has, in the honourable spirit of maritime and commercial rivalry, announced her intention to enter; and which has also attracted the attention of a wealthy London company, whose arrangements were promised to be complete in the early part of the present year. There is now every-prospect of Sydney being the first in the field.
SG 1853 Page 13
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