three ounces, one cent; over three ounces, better for the convenience of the Post one and a half cent. On newspapers sent to foreign places, the following are the rates of postage: To the West Indies, 6 cents; South Pacific Coast, 6; German States, Denmark, Holland, Prussia, Russia, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, and Italy, 6 cents; Great Britain and France, 2 cents; British North American Provinces, 1 cent. SCHEDULE OF MAIL DEPARTURES FROM SAN FRANCISCO POST OFFICE.-Atlantic States, via Panama, 5th and 20th of every month. Office, as well as for the safety of the correspondence, if letters were mailed during the night previous. Ship Mails are despatched by every opportunity for the Sandwich Islands, Society Islands, Australia, and China. Postage on letters to all parts of the Pacific, by ship, to be prepaid. DEAD LETTERS.-Letters technically termed "dead," are such as have been advertised, and have remained on hand three months; including letters refused; letters for foreign countries which can San Diego and Salt Lake, 3d and 18th not be forwarded without pre-payment of of every month. Oregon and Washington Territories, taking mails also for the Northern Coast, 1st and 21st of every month. postage; letters not addressed, or so badly directed that their destinations can not be ascertained; and letters addressed to places which are not Post Offices. All the dead letters are returned to San San Jose, 8 A. M. every day. Northern Mail via Sacramento, 4 P. Francisco at the middle or end of each M. every day, Sundays excepted. Southern and Eastern Mail via Stockton, 4 P. M. every day, Sundays excepted. Mails are kept open until ten minutes before the hour of departure, except for the Atlantic, in which case thirty minutes before the time of departure is required for closing the mails; though it would be Post Office quarter, which is on the last day of March, June, September, and December. Refused and dropped letters are not advertised. Every dead letter, before its return to San Francisco, is stamped or postmarked on the sealed side, with the name of the office and the date of its return. Here the letters are opened, and such | in the following page, which we have as contain articles of value are registered transcribed-of course omitting the names in a book made for that purpose, as shown of the parties writing and written to: A PAGE FROM THE DEAD LETTER REGISTRATION BOOK. Statement from the San Francisco Dead Letter Office, showing the valuable Dead Letters. | British possessions in North America; letters for foreign countries which cannot be forwarded; and letters not directed, or addressed to places unknown, are returned to San Francisco semi-quarterlythat is to say, at the middle and end of each post office quarter. When a letter is refused, the word "refused" is written or stamped upon it: and if the seal of a letter be broken by accident, or by being delivered to the Letters from Europe and the British possessions of North America are re-wrong person, the facts are noted upon it. turned monthly, unopened, to the respective Governments, according to treaty. There are but two "dead letter offices" in the United States-one at Washington, the other in San Francisco. Refused letters; dropped letters; letters from foreign countries, including the The following table will give the number of dead letters received at the San Francisco Dead Letter Office, quarterly; also, the number of valuable letters found amongst them, and preserved, since Mr. C. L. Weller received the appointment of Post Master: NOTE. Of the valuable letters preserved, four hundred and twenty have been delivered by the San Francisco Post Master, and the residue sent to Washington City Dead Letter Office. ATLANTIC & PACIFIC RAILROAD. | will be likely to hasten to some extent It is not that we present our readers with an engraving of a railroad train, about to start for the Mississippi River, as an advertisement that such an event will transpire on the first day of January, 1858; but it is to call your attention to the fact that such ought to be the case, and that, though prospective, the time is rapidly approaching when our illustration will be remembered as a prophetic truth. National events are about transpiring, possessing an interest no less than that which pertains to the fealty of a portion of our people to the government, that the consummation of the great work, long since so imperatively demanded. The accelerated strides that civilization is making over our great central domain, with the rapidly increasing commercial necessities consequent thereon, will ere long create a necessity for the road that must be provided for. But to wait for the full peopling and improvement of every portion of the route over which the road must eventually pass, before it can be commenced, in order to make the necessity for it continuous, would be to wait for the world's dissolution. The deserts of Asia and of Africa in the times of the ancient patriarchs, are THE PACIFIC AND ATLANTIC RAILROAD, THE IMMEDIATE WANT OF THE AGE, AND OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES. Private enterprise puts forth its energies in advancing its own interests; and government could not do better than to adopt a like policy. Private enterprise could build the road, but whether it would prove to individuals a paying investment, in dollars and cents, is quite another thing. Government, in acting for the interests of the nation, in the construction of harbors, and breakwaters, and light-houses, does not, or should not, ask whether this or that project will be likely to prove a paying investment; it should be a sufficient argument, that the wants of the nation demand the expenditure. the deserts of those countries still; and have become powerful from their isolathey are rather encroaching upon the tion. If no other argument can be adfertile and inhabited portions, than re-vanced in support of the position that ceding from them. We should not wait, government ought to build the road, this therefore, for the sterile portions that lie alone would be sufficient. between the east and the west of our continent to be peopled and made fertile, before the connecting iron track is laid. But we should use those portions, as the swamps and marshes of the Eastern States are used, for railroads to pass over. It is true, the construction of such a road as the real want of the nation demands, would be a mighty enterprise; but the results that would flow from it would be mightier still; for had we but now a railroad from either side of the continent to Salt Lake City and Valley, not so much as the first breath of rebellion would have been whispered by a people who now, in consequence of their very isolation, are actually defying the whole powers of the government; with a fair prospect of being the cause of a governmental expenditure-before tranquility will be fully restored between the contending parties, or the rebellion crushed out-perhaps fully equal to the actual cost of building a railroad from California to Salt Lake City, or from the Missouri river to Salt Lake City or Valley. We deem it a short-sighted policy on the part of recent past administrations, that some mode of rapid communication with the very centre of our continent, or country's domain, has not long since been projected, and by this time half if not wholly consummated-even without California's exposed position, or of her social and commercial wants being taken into consideration. The consequences of our past morbid policy are now before the world-a rebellion in the most central, and yet most inaccessible portion of our country. But for this very remissness on the part of the government, in neglecting to lend its aid in the construction of such railroad, we should not have been the witnesses of the rebellion of a portion of our people; who, in consequence of this very neglect, In the neglect of government to construct harbors or light-houses, millions of dollars may be lost to individuals, and no recourse had upon the government; it loses nothing. But when it neglects to provide a mode of intercommunication adapted to the wants of the country, millions of dollars must be lost to the treasury of the nation, in quelling a rebellion that never would have occurred, but for the neglect and short-sighted policy of our rulers, in not providing for the construction of this -as it ought to be-great national thorough-fare. It is unquestionably an enterprise legitimately belonging to the government, and ought to have an immediate beginning. The Central Railroad of Illinois is seven hundred and thirty-one miles in length, and cost fifteen millions of dollars; it is more than one-third the length of a railroad that would connect Califor nia with the State of Missouri; and whether built by private capital or not, or whether the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad would cost three times fifteen millions, or one hundred millions, the government is able to build it. The growing enterprise and commercial interests of the world demand it; the grandeur that attaches to a government |