The next morning, bright and early, we took a hasty breakfast, and hurried to the starting-place. Then an inconvenience presented itself which we had not properly appreciated before, namely, that one cannot make a heavy traveling trunk stand for twenty-five pounds of baggage—because it weighs a good deal more. But that was all we could take—twenty-five pounds each. So we had to snatch our trunks open, and make a selection in a good deal of a hurry. We put our lawful twenty-five pounds apiece all in one valise, and shipped the trunks back to St. Louis again. It was a sad parting, for now we had no swallow-tail coats and white kid gloves to wear at Pawnee receptions in the Rocky Mountains, and no stove-pipe hats nor patent-leather boots, nor anything else necessary to make life calm and peaceful. We were reduced to a war-footing. Each of us put on a rough, heavy suit of clothing, woolen army shirt and “stogy” boots included; and into the valise we crowded a few white shirts, some under-clothing and such things. My brother, the Secretary, took along about four pounds of United States statutes and six pounds of Unabridged Dictionary; for we did not know—poor innocents—that such things could be bought in San Francisco on one day and received in Carson City the next.
...
We took two or three blankets for protection against frosty weather in the mountains. In the matter of luxuries we were modest—we took none along but some pipes and five pounds of smoking tobacco. We had two large canteens to carry water in, between stations on the Plains, and we also took with us a little shot-bag of silver coin for daily expenses in the way of breakfasts and dinners.
By eight o’clock everything was ready, and we were on the other side of the river. We jumped into the stage, the driver cracked his whip, and we bowled away and left “the States” behind us.(Roughing It)
W
e now drive through the dusty roads of St. Jo, the observed of all observers, and presently find ourselves in the steam ferry which is to convey us from the right to the left bank of the Missouri River. The “ Big Muddy,” as it is now called—the Yellow River of old writers—venerable sire of snag and sawyer, displays at this point the source whence it has drawn for ages the dirty brown silt which pollutes below their junction the pellucid waters of the “Big Drink.’ It runs, like the lower Indus, through deep walls of stiff clayey earth, and, like that river, its supplies, when filtered (they have been calculated to contain one eighth of solid matter), are sweet and wholesome as its brother streams. The Plata of this region, it is the great sewer of the prairies, the main, channel and common issue of the water-courses and ravines which have carried on the work of denudation and degradation for days dating beyond the existence of Egypt.
See Adieu to St. Jo for Burton's account of crossing the river.
Two steam ferries, known as the Bellemont Ferry and the Ellwood Ferry, transported travellers, including Pony Express riders, across the Missouri River from Missouri to Kansas. Reportedly, the boat docked at either Jules or Francis Streets in St. Joseph. A monument, located along the shoreline of the Missouri River in Hustan Wyeth Park, represents the original site of the ferry crossing. https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/poex/hrs/hrs4a.htm
Before the mid-1950s, the Missouri River made a bend to the west at St. Joseph and to the bluffs on the west side of the river. A good landing site was at the western end of the bend. The ferries that operated there had different names at different times. The last used name was Bellemont – beginning in 1858 into the early 1900s. During the latter years, the Bellemont Kansas Steam Ferry Company ran a ferry from Bellemont to Frenchville (refers to French Bottoms, a settlement in the flood plains in Buchanan County, Missouri.) Although, some early maps show the Bellemont ferry as also running from the wharf at St. Joseph upriver for four miles to the town of Bellemont. The town no longer exists, but at one time it was the temporary county seat of Doniphan County.https://www.gateway-octa.org/bellemont-landing