June i, 1887.] 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 



807 



WESTWARD HO! [OPENINGS FOR YOUNG 



MEN IN AMERICA.] 



[To THE Editor of the " SrECXATOK."] 



Sir, — It must be nearly thirty years since I first 

 wrote to you over this signature, but never before ex- 

 cept in long vacations, and from outlandish parts. 

 Why not keep to a good rule ? you may ask, at this 

 crowded time of year. Well, the fact is I really want 

 to say something as to this " Westward Ho !" gadfly, 

 which seems to have bitten young England with a 

 vengeance in these last months. I am startled, not 

 to say alarmed, at the number of letters I get from 

 the parents and guardians — generally professional 

 men — of youngsters eagerly bent on cattle-ranches, 

 horse-ranches, orange-groves in Florida, vineyards, 

 peach and strawberry-raising, and I know not what 

 other golden dreams of wealth quickly acquired in 

 the open air, generally with plenty of wild sport 

 thrown in. I suppose they write from some fancy 

 that I know a good deal about such matters. That 

 is not so ; but I do know a very little about them, and 

 may possibly do some good by publishing that little 

 just now in your columns. 



First, then, as to cattle and horse-raising on 

 ranches. This is practically a closed business 

 on any but a small scale, and as part of 

 farm work. All the best ranehe-grounds are in 

 the hands of large and rich Companies, or million- 

 aires, with whom no new-comer can compete. It 

 will, no doubt, be a valuable experience for any young 

 man to work for a year or two on a big ranche as a 

 cow-boy ; but he must be thoroughly able to trust 

 his temper, and to rough it in many ways, or he 

 should not try it. At the end, if prudent, he will 

 only have been able to save a few hundred dollars. 

 But this is not the kind of thing, fo far as I see, that 

 our youngsters at all expect or want. Orange-groves 

 are excellent and profitable things, no doubt, and 

 there are parts in Florida and elsewhere^where there 

 is still plenty of land fit for this purpose, though the 

 choice spots are probably occupied. But an orange 

 grove will not give any return till the sixth year, 

 cautious people say the seventh. 



Vineyards may, with good luck, be giving some re- 

 turn in the third or fourth year ; but the amount of 

 hard work which must be put into the soil in break- 

 ing up, clearing out stumps, and ploughing, even if 

 there is no timber to fell, is very serious ; and the 

 same may be said of peach-orchards and early fruit 

 and vegetable-rearing. Moreover, 

 places for such mdustry, such 

 Mountain, are for the most part 

 a word, though it is quite possible 

 other industries, and in ordinary farming, nothing 

 beyond a decent living can be earned, without at 

 any rate as free an expenditure of brain and muscle 

 as high farming requires at home. On the other 

 hand, sport, except for rich ranche-men who can 

 command waggons, horses, and men, and travel 

 long distances for it, is not to be had generally and 

 apt to disappoint where it can be had. 



So much for the working side of the problem. 

 The playing side — outside whisky-shops, which I 

 will assume the young Englishmen means to keep 

 clear of— ought also to be looked fairly in the 

 face before the experiment is tried. Perhaps the 

 most direct way to bring it home to inquirers will 

 be to quote from the letter of a young English 

 public-school boy who has lately 

 year as a cowboy on the cattle 

 the big Companies : — 



" Friday night we had quite a time. We went to 



an exhibition of the home talent of , and really of 



all show.s this was the wor.st I ever saw. One man, 

 the town barber, and our greatest ' society man,' played 

 a uigger, and played it so well that one could not 

 help fancying he has at onetime been a ' fprofesh.' The 

 rest were so dull and such sticks that it made him 



the choice 

 as Look-out 

 occupied. In 

 to do well in 



finished his first 

 ranche of one of 



shine more than ever. After the home talent, there 

 was a ' social hop,' at ivhich Jerry and I shone as 

 being the ' bored young men.' You can, of course, see 

 why I was bored ; and Jerry, he is from Ohio, and of 



course cannot compete with Ohio. However, as 



Jerry was somewhat of a great man, the quadrilles be- 

 inp all called by him — i. e., he stood on the stage and 

 shouted, ' balance all,' ' swing your partners,' ' lady's 

 chain,' at the right time — we had to stay, and more 

 or less to dance. Jerry took great pains to find nie 

 partners worthy of a man who had danced in a dress- 

 coat. He did not succeed but once, when he intro- 

 duced me to a very lively little scbool-lidy, ' marm,' 

 I shoald f-ay; the rest were very wooden iu movement 

 and conversation. The school-maim amused me very 

 much. She had not long returned from the ■Uni- 

 versity, where all the young ladies, though they met 

 the other sex at school, were not allowed to speak to 

 them at other times. The girls were allowed to 

 give dances, but she and three or four others thought 

 that a 'hen-pie ' dance was too much of a fraud, so 

 they contrived a plan by which they couM get three 

 or four dancing men in without going to the door. They 

 fastened a pulley on to the beam where the bell hung, 

 and with the aid of a clothes-basket and a rope they 

 spoiled the 'hen-pie' with two or three young men. 

 This plan worked well several times, till one night 

 three or four of them were exerting themselves to get 

 a very heavy hoy up, when instead of a boy they per- 

 ceived the bearded face of the head master. In horror 

 thep turned loose the rope and fled, leaving bim twelve 

 feet from the ground, hanging on by bis fingers to tlie 

 window sill, from which, as no one would respond to 

 his call for help; be finally dropped. Theyounglady 

 told it much better than 1 have. .Jerry was very popular 

 as a ' caller.' I noticed lie understood his audience 

 well, and whenever they got a figure they didn't know, 

 he came in with ' giajd chain,' which they all knew 

 and performf-d very nicely; so you would see a whole 

 set lust in the intricate feat of ' visiting ' (say) and 

 all muddled up, when you would hear the grand voice 

 of .Jerry, ' grand chain,' and all the dancers would smile 

 and go to it, and Jerry was quite the boss. We, how- 

 ever, lost our reputation as good young men, aa to- 

 wards midnight we were overcome with a great tbirst ; 

 so wicked I, a hardened sinner, persuaded the social 

 barber to let mo have half-a-pint of whisky ; and J and 

 I were caught in the barber's shop, eating tinned oys- 

 ters with our pocket-knives, and biscuits, and indulge 

 ing iu whisky-and- water. We were caught by thre- 

 youug men wlio had ' got religion ' last fall, and who 

 were, of course, highly shocked ; but I thiuk they would 

 have overcome all their scruples hut for the steru mothers 

 ill the background, and they not only envied us our 

 whisky-and-water, but also our mothers. Half the fight 

 iu drinking, I think, is to have been ' raised ' to look 

 upon it as an every-day luxury, and not as a thing 

 to be had as a great treat on the .sly. Well, good-bye ! 

 [ have written a lot of rubbish,but beyond that am fatter 

 than I have ever been in America." 

 This will probably give readers a pretty clear 

 notion of the social life available in the West. 

 It is, as they will see at a glance, utterly unlike 

 anything they have been used to. If this kind of 

 social life (and there is something to be said for it) 

 is what they want, in the interludes of really hard 

 manual labour and rough board and lodging, let 

 them start by all means, and they may do very well 

 out West. Otherwise they had better look the 

 thing round twice or thrice before starting. In any 

 case, no young man ought to take more ready- 

 money with him than will just keep him from starv- 

 ing for about a month. If he cannot make his hands 

 keep him by that time, he has no business, and will 

 do no good, in the West. — I am, Sir, Ac. 



A'.icuus Viator. 



Oysters. — According to recently published statis- 

 tics, the export of oysters from France during the 

 year 1885 was no less than (lOO millions, '23(i millions of 

 which were supplied from the famous Arcachon 

 oyster parks only.— M. Mail. 



