From Independence in Missouri another line of coaches carried the mail over the old Santa Fe trail to New Mexico. The great Western mail route began at St. Louis, went across Missouri and Arkansas, curved southward to El Paso in Texas, and then by way of the Gila River to Los Angeles and San Francisco; the distance of 2729 miles was covered in twenty-four days. [4] [Illustration: OVERLAND MAIL COACH STARTING FROM SAN FRANCISCO FOR THE EAST IN 1858. Contemporary drawing.] PONY EXPRESS.--This was too slow for business men, and in 1860 the stage company started the Pony Express to carry letters on horseback from St. Joseph to San Francisco. Mounted on a swift pony, the rider, a brave, cool-headed, picked man, would gallop at breakneck speed to the first relay station, jump on the back of another pony and speed away to the second, mount a fresh horse and be off for a third. At the third station he would find a fresh rider mounted, who, the moment the mail bags had been fastened to his horse, would ride off to cover his three stations in as short a time as possible. The riders left each end of the route twice a week or oftener. The total distance, about two thousand miles, was passed over in ten days. [5] In the large cities of the East free delivery of letters by carriers was introduced (1863), the postal money order system was adopted (1864), and trials were made with postal cars in which the mail was sorted while _en route_. THE TELEGRAPH.--Meanwhile Congress (in June, 1860) incorporated the Pacific Telegraph Company to build a line across the continent. By November the line reached Fort Kearny, where an operator was installed in a little sod hut. By October, 1861, the two lines, one building eastward from California, and the other westward from Omaha, reached Salt Lake City. The charge for a ten-word message from New York to Salt Lake City was 87.50. When the telegraph line was finished, the work of the Pony Express ended, and all letters went by the overland stage line, whose coaches entered every large mining center, carrying passengers, express matter, and the mail. [6] OVERLAND FREIGHT.--The discovery of gold in western Kansas, in 1858, and the founding of Denver, led to a great freight business across the plains. Flour, bacon, sugar, coffee, dry goods, hardware, furniture, clothing, came in immense quantities to Omaha, St. Joseph, Atchison, Leavenworth, there to be hauled to the "diggings." Atchison became a trade center. There, in the spring of 1860, might have been seen hundreds of wagons, and tons of goods piled on the levee, and warehouses full of provisions, boots, shoes, and clothing. From it, day after day, went a score of prairie schooners drawn by horses, mules, or oxen. [7]