We briefly alluded, some days since, to the Santa Fe line
of mail stages, which left this city on its first monthly
journey on the 1st instant. The stages are got up in
elegant style, and are each arranged to convey eight
passengers. The bodies are beautifully painted, and made
water-tight, with a view of using them as boats in ferrying
streams. The team consists of six mules to each coach.
The mail is guarded by eight men, armed as follows: Each man
has at his side, fastened in the stage, one of Colt's
revolving rifles; in a holster below, one of Colt's long
revolvers, and in his belt a small Colt's revolver, besides
a hunting-knife; so that these eight men are ready, in case
of attack, to discharge one hundred and thirty-six shots
without having to reload. This is equal to a small army,
armed as in the ancient times, and from the looks of this
escort, ready as they are, either for offensive or defensive
warfare with the savages, we have no fears for the safety
of the mails.
The accommodating contractors have established a sort of
base of refitting at Council Grove, a distance of one
hundred and fifty miles from this city, and have sent out
a blacksmith, and a number of men to cut and cure hay, with
a quantity of animals, grain, and provisions; and we
understand they intend to make a sort of traveling station
there, and to commence a farm. They also, we believe,
intend to make a similar settlement at Walnut Creek next
season. Two of their stages will start from here the
first of every month.
The old stage-coach days were times of Western romance and adventure, and the stories told of that era of the border have a singular fascination in this age of annihilation of distance.
Very few, if any, of the famous men who handled the "ribbons" in those dangerous days of the slow journey across the great plains are among the living; like the clumsy and forgotten coaches they drove, they have themselves been mouldering into dust these many years.
In many places on the line of the Trail, where the hard hills have not been subjected to the plough, the deep ruts cut by the lumbering Concord coaches may yet be distinctly traced. Particularly are they visible from the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe track, as the cars thunder rapidly toward the city of Great Bend, in Kansas, three miles east of that town. Let the tourist as he crosses Walnut Creek look out of his window toward the east at an angle of about thirty-five degrees, and on the flint hills which slope gradually toward the railroad, he will observe, very distinctly, the Old Trail, where it once drew down from the divide to make the ford at the little stream.
The monthly stages started from each end of the route at the same time; later the service was increased to once a week; after a while to three times, until in the early '60's daily stages were run from both ends of the route, and this was continued until the advent of the railroad.
Each coach carried eleven passengers, nine closely stowed inside—three on a seat—and two on the outside on the boot with the driver. The fare to Santa Fe was two hundred and fifty dollars, the allowance of baggage being limited to forty pounds; all in excess of that cost half a dollar a pound. In this now seemingly large sum was included the board of the travellers, but they were not catered to in any extravagant manner; hardtack, bacon, and coffee usually exhausted the menu, save that at times there was an abundance of antelope and buffalo.
There was always something exciting in those journeys from the Missouri to the mountains in the lumbering Concord coach. There was the constant fear of meeting the wily red man, who persistently hankered after the white man's hair. Then there was the playfulness of the sometimes drunken driver, who loved to upset his tenderfoot travellers in some arroya, long after the moon had sunk below the horizon.
It required about two weeks to make the trip from the Missouri River to Santa Fe, unless high water or a fight with the Indians made it several days longer. The animals were changed every twenty miles at first, but later, every ten, when faster time was made. What sleep was taken could only be had while sitting bolt upright, because there was no laying over; the stage continued on night and day until Santa Fe was reached.
After a few years, the company built stations at intervals varying from ten miles to fifty or more; and there the animals and drivers were changed, and meals furnished to travellers, which were always substantial, but never elegant in variety or cleanliness.
Who can ever forget those meals at the "stations," of which you were obliged to partake or go hungry: biscuit hard enough to serve as "round-shot," and a vile decoction called, through courtesy, coffee—but God help the man who disputed it!