Page:Oregon, her history, her great men, her literature.djvu/197

 Country was the time required to send and receive mail to and from "The States.*' Of course, there were no facilities of any kind for transporting letters or papers save that of private conveyance which required six months for the trip in one direction. A letter sent by the wife of Doctor Whitman in 1841 was six months and seven days in transit from Waiilatpu to Westport, Missouri, which was the nearest postoffice as one traveled eastward. The postage on the letter from Westport to Quincy, Illinois, was eighteen cents. John Minto, a well known pioneer who settled near Salem in 1 844, sent a letter to his father who was living in Pennsyl- OVERLAND STAGE

vania and it went by sailing vessel to Sandwich Islands and thence across the Isthmus, reaching its destination by the way of New York six months later. The elder Minto answered at once and his letter was delivered to the son a few days more than one year afterward. No less personage than the poet Joaquin Miller traveled on snow shoes and carried the mail over the mountains for the miners of Florence, Idaho, during the winter months of the early "Sixties,'* charging fifty cents per letter.

Stage Lines and "Pony Express System." Oregon had been admitted into the Union as a State by act of congress •