Читать книгу The Overland Trail онлайн

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One would give a good deal to know his thoughts as he sat with his long legs braced against the railing of the old Pacific Hotel, which you can see to this day. Lincoln was at this time an exceedingly handsome young man in spite of his ungainly lank long shambling figure. He was clean shaved. His hair was thick over his temples, brushed back. His forehead was very white, his face fuller and healthier in color than a few years later and quite untrenched by the terrible lines of care that soon after trenched eyes and forehead with a sculpture of agony. It was really the face of a young prophet. We know that even in the 1850’s, he grasped what few in the nation did—that here westward must grow up a new republic to be held in national unity at any cost. He had been an attorney for Eastern railroads and knew they must be projected across the Missouri—again at any cost, though the nation must pay the cost. He knew roads—rail and wagon—must be built and protected by troops.

I have spoken of the Pony Mail Express preceding rails. It deserves more than passing notice. It was one of the most picturesque things on the Trail. It developed some of the finest types of booted and spurred knights known to history; and nearly all have passed to oblivion or died on duty in their boots. Far as I know only one—Buffalo Bill—came down in history and he came by the showman’s route. Yet I know sons and daughters of some of those Pony Express riders, who have told me tales of their fathers, who lost a leg or arm by being frozen as they reeled off the dizzy miles in winter blizzard; but—they got the mail through and for that duty received five dollars a day and keep.