Mail was usually carried west on ships that sailed around the bottom of South America and then north to California.That could take several months.   So, in eighteen fifty-seven, D.C.Lawmakers in Congress  in Washington wanted to make it possible to send mail all the way across the United States by land.Congress offered to help any company that would try to deliver mail overland to the West Coast. A man named John Butterfield accepted this offer. He developed plans for a company that would carry the mail--and passengers, too.  Congress gave John Butterfield six hundred thousand dollars to start his company. In return, he had to promise that the mail would travel from Saint Louis, Missouri, to San Francisco, California, in twenty-five days or less.  It was not possible to travel straight through because of the Rocky Mountains and the deep snow that fell in winter. So the stagecoach  would travel south from Saint Louis to El Paso, Texas, then over to southern California, then north to San Francisco. The distance was about four thousand five hundred kilometers. Two hundred of these stations were built, each about thirty-two kilometers apart. The workers were to quickly change the horses or mules whenever a stagecoach reached the station. There could be no delay. Each stagecoach was to travel nearly two hundred kilometers a day. One hundred stagecoaches were built and painted red or dark green. They were the most modern coaches that money could buy. They were designed to hold as many as nine passengers and twelve thousand pieces of mail. The seats inside could be folded down to make beds. Passengers either slept on them or on the bags of mail.  The cost would be one hundred fifty dollars to travel from Saint Louis to San Francisco. If a passenger was not going all the way, the cost was about ten cents a kilometer. The passengers had to buy their own food at the stations. The stagecoach would stop for forty minutes, two times a day.  The company warned passengers about the possible dangers. A poster said: "You will be traveling through Indian country and the safety of your person cannot by granted by anyone but God." As is described in the passage, the stagecoach   _  .
could only stop once a day was modern with seats ,beds and cooking equipment was a closed wagon operated only by skillful drivers. had different horses or mules pulled all the way