was piling up by the ton awaiting shipment.  Matters were getting serious when Cornelius Vanderbilt came to the Government’s relief and agreed to furnish steamer service until Congress assembled in March, 1861, provided the Federal authorities would assure him “a fair and adequate compensation.”  This agreement was effected and the affair settled as agreed.  At the expiration of the period, the war and the growing importance of the overland route made steamship service by way of the Isthmus quite obsolete.

[37] The contractors are said to have been awarded $50,000 by the Government for their trouble in haying the agreement broken.

[38] See page 153.  Holladay secured possession of the outfits of the C. O. C. & P. P. Exp.  Co., between the Missouri and Salt Lake City.

[39] The Pioneer Line which had recently come into power and prominence had gained possession of the equipment west of Salt Lake.  This line was owned by Louis and Charles McLane.  Louis McLane afterward became President of the Wells Fargo Express Co.

[40] Holladay is said to have received one million five hundred thousand dollars cash, and three hundred thousand dollars in express company stock for his interests.  Besides these amounts which covered only the animals, rolling stock, stations, and incidental equipment, Wells Fargo and Co. had to pay full market value for all grain, hay and provisions along the line, amounting to nearly six hundred thousand dollars more.

Chapter IX

Passing of the Pony Express

When Edward Creighton completed the Pacific telegraph, and, on October 24, 1861, began sending messages; by wire from coast to coast, the California Pony Express formally went out of existence.  For over three months since July 1, it had been paralleled by the daily overland stage; yet the great efficiency of the semi-weekly pony line in offering quick letter service won and retained its popularity to the very end of its career.  And this was in spite of the fact that for several weeks before its discontinuance the pony men had ridden only between the ends of the fast building telegraph which was constructed in two divisions — from the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Missouri River — at the same time, the lines meeting near the Great Salt Lake.

The people of the far West strongly protested against the elimination of the pony line service.  Early in the winter of 1862 it became rumored — perhaps wildly — that the Committee on Finance in the House of Representatives had, for reasons of economy, stricken out the appropriation for the continuance of the daily stage.  Whereupon the California legislature[41] addressed a set of joint resolutions to the state’s delegation in Congress, imploring not only that the Daily Stage be retained, but that the Pony Express be reestablished.  The stage was continued but the pony line was never restored.