l silk to protect them from moisture, either
from stormy weather, fording streams, or perspiring animals. While a
mail of twenty pounds might be carried, the average weight did not
exceed fifteen pounds. The postal charges were at first, five dollars
for each half-ounce letter, but this rate was afterward reduced by the
Post Office Department to one dollar for each half ounce. At this figure
it remained as long as the line was in business. In addition to this
rate, a regulation government envelope costing ten cents, had to be
purchased. Patrons generally made use of a specially light tissue paper
for their correspondence. The large newspapers of New York, Boston,
Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco were among the best customers of
the service. Some of the Eastern dailies even kept special
correspondents at St. Joseph to receive and telegraph to the home office
news from the West as soon as it arrived. On account of the enormous
postage rates these newspapers would print special editions of Civil War
news on the thinnest of paper to avoid all possible mailing bulk.

Mr. Frank A. Root of Topeka, Kansas, who was Assistant Postmaster and
Chief Clerk in the post office at Atchison during the last two months of
the line's existence, in 1861, says that during that period the Express,
which was running semi-weekly, brought about three hundred and fifty
letters each trip from California[10]. Many of these communications were
from government and state officials in California and Oregon, and
addressed to the Federal authorities at Washington, particularly to
Senators and Representatives from these states and to authorities of the
War Department. A few were addressed to Abraham Lincoln, President of
the United States. A large number of these letters were from business
and professional men in Portland, San Francisco, Oakland, and
Sacramento, and mailed to firms in the large cities of the East and
Middle West. Not to mention the rendering of invaluable help to the
Government in retaining California at the beginning of the War, the Pony
Express was of the greatest importance to the commercial interests of
the West.

The line was frequently used by the British Government in forwarding its
Asiatic correspondence to London. In 1860, a report of the activities of
the English fleet off the coast of China was sent through from San
Francisco eastward over this route. For the transmission of these
dispatches that Government paid one hundre