Yet the press could boast of occasional feats of news presentation which would do credit to journalism even now. The political meetings of each party were almost always well reported by its own party organs. In 1807 Burr’s trial was covered for the _Evening Post_ by a special correspondent whose reports were dry--there was no description of scene or personages, no attention to emphasis, and little direct quotation of counsel or witnesses--but were also expert, comprehensive, and minute. It is well known that the greatest of American earthquakes occurred in 1811 in the Missouri and Arkansas country just west of the Mississippi. The _Evening Post_ was fortunate enough to obtain a three-column account of it, vivid, intelligent, and thrilling, from the pen of an observer who witnessed it from a point near New Madrid. The special Albany letters were fair; for years the _Evening Post_ derived occasional bits of inside information from Federalist Congressmen, and made good use of them; and its London correspondence, which began in 1819 with an account of the Holkham sheep-shearing, was on a level with much London correspondence of to-day. One of the most extravagant items in the _Evening Post’s_ first account book is $50 for getting President Madison’s annual message of 1809 to New York by “pony express.” An attempt was made to use carrier pigeons when the House in 1824 elected J. Q. Adams President, but it proved a failure. After the commencement of the War of 1812, as we should expect, much more assiduous attention was paid to news. From five columns, the space allotted rapidly rose to six, seven, and even eight. Almost always, of course, it was very late news. Word of the first disaster of the war, Hull’s surrender at Detroit, was published by the _Evening Post_ on Aug. 31, 1812. The capitulation has occurred on the 16th, and the news came by two routes. An express rider had carried it from Sandusky to Cleveland, and thence it was brought by a postal carrier to Warren, Pa., on the 22d, so that Pittsburgh had it on the 23d, and Philadelphia on the night of the 29th. At the same time it was coming by a southern path. Hull sent a messenger direct to Washington, who arrived in the capital on the 28th, and whose dispatches were relayed northward.