ts of six mules to each coach.
The mail is guarded by eight men, armed as follows: Each man
has at his side, fastened in the stage, one of Colt's
revolving rifles; in a holster below, one of Colt's long
revolvers, and in his belt a small Colt's revolver, besides
a hunting-knife; so that these eight men are ready, in case
of attack, to discharge one hundred and thirty-six shots
without having to reload. This is equal to a small army,
armed as in the ancient times, and from the looks of this
escort, ready as they are, either for offensive or defensive
warfare with the savages, we have no fears for the safety
of the mails.

The accommodating contractors have established a sort of
base of refitting at Council Grove, a distance of one
hundred and fifty miles from this city, and have sent out
a blacksmith, and a number of men to cut and cure hay, with
a quantity of animals, grain, and provisions; and we
understand they intend to make a sort of traveling station
there, and to commence a farm. They also, we believe,
intend to make a similar settlement at Walnut Creek next
season. Two of their stages will start from here the
first of every month.

The old stage-coach days were times of Western romance and adventure,
and the stories told of that era of the border have a singular
fascination in this age of annihilation of distance.

Very few, if any, of the famous men who handled the "ribbons" in those
dangerous days of the slow journey across the great plains are among
the living; like the clumsy and forgotten coaches they drove, they have
themselves been mouldering into dust these many years.

In many places on the line of the Trail, where the hard hills have not
been subjected to the plough, the deep ruts cut by the lumbering Concord
coaches may yet be distinctly traced. Particularly are they visible from
the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe track, as the cars thunder rapidly
toward the city of Great Bend, in Kansas, three miles east of that town.
Let the tourist as he crosses Walnut Creek look out of his window toward
the east at an angle of about thirty-five degrees, and on the flint
hills which slope gradually toward the railroad, he will observe, very
distinctly, the Old Trail, where it once drew down from the di