The good news from the battle-fields of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma was eighteen days in reaching New York. All Mexican news came by steamer to New Orleans or Mobile, and was forwarded from those ports, by the railroad or other means, to the nearest telegraph-station. Moses Y. Beach was instrumental in whipping up the service from the South, for he established a special railroad news service between Mobile and Montgomery, a district of Alabama where there had been much delay. On September 11, 1846, the _Sun_ uttered halleluiahs over the spread of the telegraph. The line to Buffalo had been opened on the previous day. The invention had been in every-day use only two years, but more than twelve hundred miles of line had been built, as follows: New York to Boston 265 New York to Albany and Buffalo 507 New York to Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington 240 Philadelphia to Harrisburg 105 Boston to Lowell 26 Boston toward Portland 55 Ithaca to Auburn 40 Troy to Saratoga 31 ----- Total 1,269 England had then only one hundred and seventy-five miles of telegraph. “This,” gloated the _Sun_, “is American enterprise!” The _Sun_ did not have a special correspondent in Mexico, and most of its big stories during the war, including the account of the storming of Monterey, were those sent to the New Orleans _Picayune_ by George W. Kendall, who is supposed to have put in the mouth of General Taylor the words-- “A little more grape, Captain Bragg!” Moses Yale Beach himself started for Mexico as a special agent of President Polk, with power to talk peace, but the negotiations between Beach and the Mexican government were broken off by a false report of General Taylor’s defeat by Santa Anna, and Mr. Beach returned to his paper. The more facilities for news-getting the papers enjoyed, the more they printed--and the more it cost them. Each had been doing its bit on its own hook. The _Sun_ and the _Courier and Enquirer_ had spent extravagant sums on their horse expresses from Washington. The _Sun_ and the _Herald_ may have profited by hiring express-trains to race from Boston to New York with the latest news brought by the steamships, but the outflow of money was immense. The news-boats--clipper-ships, steam-vessels, and rowboats--which went down to Sandy Hook to meet incoming steamers cost the _Sun_, the _Herald_, the _Courier and Enquirer_, and the _Journal of Commerce_ a pretty penny.