inent. Along the entire course there were but four military posts
and they were strung along at intervals of from two hundred and fifty to
three hundred and fifty miles from each other. Over most of the journey
there were only small way stations to break the awful monotony.
Topographically, the trail covered nearly six hundred miles of rolling
prairie, intersected here and there by streams fringed with timber. The
nature of the mountainous regions, the deserts, and alkali plains as
avenues of horseback travel is well understood. Throughout these areas
the men and horses had to endure such risks as rocky chasms, snow
slides, and treacherous streams, as well as storms of sand and snow. The
worst part of the journey lay between Salt Lake City and Sacramento,
where for several hundred miles the route ran through a desert, much of
it a bed of alkali dust where no living creature could long survive. It
was not merely these dangers of dire exposure and privation that
threatened, for wherever the country permitted of human life, Indians
abounded. From the Platte River valley westward, the old route sped over
by the Pony Express is today substantially that of the Union Pacific and
Southern Pacific Railroads.

In California, the region most benefited by the express, the opening of
the line was likewise awaited with the keenest anticipation. Of course
there had been at the outset a few dissenting opinions, the gist of the
opposing sentiment being that the Indians would make the operation of
the route impossible. One newspaper went so far as to say that it was
"Simply inviting slaughter upon all the foolhardy young men who had been
engaged as riders". But the California spirit would not down. A vast
majority of the people favored the enterprise and clamored for it; and
before the express had been long in operation, all classes were united
in the conviction that they could not do without it.

At San Francisco and Sacramento, then the two most important towns in
the far West, great preparations were made to celebrate the first
outgoing and incoming mails. On April 3rd, at the same hour the express
started from St. Joseph[4], the eastbound mail was placed on board a
steamer at San Francisco and sent up the river, accompanied by an
enthusiastic delegation of business men. On the arrival of the pouch and
its escort at Sacramento, the capital city, they were greeted with the
blare of bands, the firing of guns, and the clanging of gongs.