%489.  The Pony Express; the Overland Stage.%—­By that time, too, the first locomotive had reached the frontier of Kansas.  But between the Missouri and the Pacific there was still a gap of 2000 miles which the settlers demanded should be spanned at once, and it was.  In 1860 the same firm that sent the first stagecoach over the prairie from Leavenworth to Denver, ran a pony express from the Missouri to the Pacific.  Their plan was to start at St. Joseph, Mo., and send the mail on horseback across the continent to San Francisco.  As the speed must be rapid, there must be frequent relays.  Stations were therefore established every twenty-five miles, and at them fresh horses and riders were kept.  Mounted on a spirited Indian pony, the mail carrier would set out from St. Joseph and gallop at breakneck speed to the first relay station, swing himself from his pony, vault into the saddle of another standing ready, and dash on toward the next station.  At every third relay a fresh rider took the mail.  Day and night, in sunshine and storm, over prairie and mountain, the mail carrier pursued his journey alone.  The cost in human life was immense.  The first riders made the journey of 1996 miles in ten days.  Next came the Wells and Fargo Express, and then the Butterfield Overland Stage Company.

%490.  The Union Pacific Railroad; the Land Grant Roads.%—­Meantime the war opened, and an idea often talked of took definite shape.  California had scarcely been admitted, in 1850, when the plan to bind her firmly to the Union by a great railroad, built at national cost, was urged vigorously.  By 1856 the people began to demand it, and in that year the Republican party, and in 1860 both the Republican and Democratic parties, pledged themselves to build one.  The secession of the South, and the presence at Denver of a growing population, made the need imperative, and in 1862 Congress began the work.

Two companies were chartered.  One, the Union Pacific, was to begin at Omaha and build westward.  The other, the Central Pacific, was to begin at Sacramento and build eastward till the two met.  The Union Pacific was to receive from the government a subsidy in bonds of $16,000 for each mile built across the plains, $48,000 for each of 150 miles across the Rocky Mountains, and $32,000 a mile for the rest of the way.  It received all told on its 1033 miles $27,226,000.  The Central Pacific, under like conditions, received for its 883 miles from San Francisco to Ogden $27,850,000.  But the liberality of Congress did not end here.  Each road was also given every odd-numbered section in a strip of public land twenty miles wide along its entire length.

%491.  Land Grants for Railroads and Canals.%—­Grants of land in aid of such improvements were not new.  Between 1827 and 1860 Congress gave away to canals, roads, and railroads 215,000,000 acres.  This magnificent expanse would make seven states as large as Pennsylvania, or three and a half as large as Oregon, and is only 6000 acres less than the total area of the thirteen original states with their present boundaries.