ion
was seriously felt. There were no telegraphs and no railroads, and no
way for business men to correspond with each other except across a
continent on wheels or around a continent by sea. What was to be done?
It did not take the genius of American enterprise long to solve the
problem. The overland immigration and its incidents had developed a
class of men skilled in horsemanship, Indian fighting, and all the
accomplishments that attend the latter, such as courage, wary
intelligence, and a peculiar sagacity in trailing and scouting, only
learned by intercourse with wild animals and wild men. Such men, for
instance, as Col. Wm. Cody, now celebrated as "Buffalo Bill," and Robert
Haslam, distinguished as "Pony Bob," are its best representatives. This
class of men much resembled the rough riders of to-day, and could be
relied upon for any enterprise that involved adventure, courage and
endurance. At the same time, the country was not lacking in a higher
degree of intellect which could conceive a project that would call into
play the utmost ability of this class of men.

California had been, and I think was, in 1860, represented in the senate
of the United States by Senator Guin, who was associated with Alexander
Majors and Daniel E. Phelps in transportation matters. They conceived
the project of reducing the time between the Pacific Coast and the
States by the establishment of an express, from St. Joseph, on the
Missouri river, to Sacramento in California, a distance of about two
thousand miles, which was to carry special business mails, together with
light and valuable express matter, by means of ponies, ridden by young
men rapidly for short distances, between the two points. Of course, this
scheme involved an immense expenditure for stations all along the route,
horses and men to ride them, and all other elements that would
necessarily enter into the scheme. The matter was discussed fully at
both ends of the route, and found many advocates and much opposition.
The most experienced plainsmen and mountaineers pronounced it
impracticable, on account of the dangers to be met with, and the
opinion was expressed that no package risked on this line would ever
reach its destination, and that all the riders would be murdered before
a test could be made. Sense and experience seemed to uphold these views.
It must be remembered that the whole distance was a wilderness of desert
and mountain ranges, little known, and infested with t