Page 120 - Cooke's Peak - Pasaron Por Aqui

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theNewYorkHeraldandthefirstthroughpassenger west. The stage was driven by John Butterfield, Jr., and the other passengers that rode as far as Fort Smith were a Judge Wheeler, T. R. Corbin, and an unidentified lady and her two children. At the other end of the line, the eastbound coach had been on its way since shortly after midnight the day before.
Asthecoachspedwest(Figure32),mealstops were made twice a day and the men cooked over buffalo chips. On one leg of the trip, having forgot- ten the coffee, they had only jerked beef, raw onions, slightly wormy crackers, and a bit of bacon for break- fast. Ormsby remarked later that “the stomach, however, does not long remain delicate after a few
days of life on the plains, and our breakfast was quite acceptable to me.”108
They met the first eastbound Butterfield coach about 100 miles east of El Paso, and Ormsby was temporarily relieved when, on reaching El Paso, the team was changed from mules to a “good team of Californiahorses.”109 TheypulledoutofElPasoat 40 minutes after five on the morning of September 30. Ormsby recorded that the Rio Grande at the crossing between Fort Fillmore and Mesilla was “but an insignificant puddle” and that a few miles below El Paso the river had changed its channel and added
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several towns to the American territory.
made some derogatory comments about the people of Mesilla.
Ormsby’s luck failed to hold, and at Picacho he got mules again and “started on a dreary ride of 52 miles for Cooke’s Spring.” 111 He walked almost the entire two miles of Picacho Pass, noting that it had some very bad hills.
hadimprovedtheroad,it musthavebeenpretty terrible at the start. He also noted that the Overland Company used very little of the improved route between El Paso and Yuma. After a short stop to change teams at Cooke’s Spring, where the station consisted only of a tent at that time, they left at one-half hour past midnight October 1, slightly less than19hoursoutofElPaso.112 Underawaning half-moon, they hurried down the slope and across the flats near the spring, crossed the arroyo, passed John Chaffin’s quiet grave, and headed for the dark mouth of Cooke’s Canyon, a scant half-mile away. A few miles farther on they met the second eastbound coach.
They had been nearly 43 hours behind schedule on reaching El Paso, but by making an average of over 5 1/2 miles per hour (not 9 miles per hour as er- roneously reported initially by Ormsby or the 6 1/2 as corrected in his report on October 13, 1858), they had reduced this deficit to 32 1/2 hours by the time
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By half past seven in the morning of October 10, the westbound coach reached San Francisco, making the run in less thanthe25daysrequiredbycontract. Ormsby,in reportingthisfeat, notedthatthepassagehadbeen made in 23 days, 23 1/2 hours. He acknowledged the need to adjust this to account for the two-hour time difference between St. Louis and San Francis-
co, but failed to do so. The correct elapsed time of
the first east-west run was 24 days, 1 1/2 hours, one *
1^
hour ahead of the published schedule.
In commenting on his experience, Ormsby noted
that the employees on the line had been courteous, civil, and attentive; most of them were from the east and many, especially the drivers, were from New York State. Healsorecordedthat he thought the government, in- stead of concentrating troops at the forts, should distribute them along the stage line. They could protect the stations
He commented that if indeed Leach
The Butterfield Overland Mail Company
Figure32. NewMexicostagecoach. PhotocourtesyoftheMuseumof NewMexico, #11934.
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and be more responsive to any
emergency by providing a wall
beyond which the Indians
would not be allowed to
115 pass.
Another through passenger thatmadeacompletereportof hisexperienceswasG.Bailey,
He also
they reached Tucson on October 2.