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4 into the office and placed facing the office the letters are placed into the saddle bags, the driver takes his seat the Telegraph operator makes up the last dispatches from New York and Washington the cannon at the doors thunders the warning to the ferry boats which is in readiness to convey the messenger across the river and now the last minute having expired the last dispatches are placed in the bag marked with the hour and minute of starting the cannon thunders out once more and before its smoke has cleared away the messenger is off swift as the best mettle of his horse can take him one mile at a headlong gallop though the city, and ther he gets on board the ferryboat in five minutes more he is in Kansas on the road for the Pacific this rider stays on his horse two hours and a half or while he is making twenty five miles, then there is another horse and rider waiting, the saddle bags are changed to the fresh horse the new rider jumps into his seat and off again once more and so on changing about the same distances untill at last they reach San Francisco in seven or eight days. It was indeed a grand idea the interchange of news across the continent in such a short time almost equal to Rail Road speed the distance being about twenty hundred miles, over mountains and through deserts. We stopped in St Joseph about four days and then concluded it was time to proceed on our long journey. We went down to the Missouri river, and took passage on board of a ferry boat for Belmont, a village on the Kansas side about five miles from St Joe. The Missouri river here is about four hundred yards wide, the water is very yellow being a mixture of about one half part of sand and water, it has a very rapid current running at the rate of about ten miles an hour. In some places it is very deep but the sand bars are all movable which makes it very dangerous to navigation. After stemming the current for about an hour we landed at Belmont, we found the town to consist of about three