The only transportation to California was
by stage-coach, a sixty days' journey, or else across Panama, or
else round the Horn, a choice of three evils. But to establish
quicker communication, even though transportation might lag, the
men of St. Joseph organized the Pony Express, to cover the great
wild distance by riders on horseback, in ten or twelve days.
Relay stations for the horses and men were set up at appropriate
points all along the way, and a postboy dashed off from St.
Joseph every twenty-four hours, on arrival of the train from the
East. And for a time the Pony Express did its work and did it
well. President Lincoln's First Inaugural was carried to
California by the Pony Express; so was the news of the firing on
Fort Sumter. But by 1869. the Pony Express was quietly superseded
by the telegraph, which in that year had completed its circuits
all the way to San Francisco, seven years ahead of the first
transcontinental railroad. And in four more years Cyrus W. Field
and Peter Cooper had carried to complete success the Atlantic
Cable; and the Morse telegraph was sending intelligence across
the sea, as well as from New York to the Golden Gate.
And today ships at sea and stations on land, separated by the
sea, speak to one another in the language of the Morse Code,
without the use of wires.
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