GRAZING PROBLEMS IN THE SOUTHWEST AND HOW 



TO MEET THEM. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The plains and prairies of Texas have long been famed as grazing 

 regions. There are few similar areas where the natural conditions at 

 the time of first occupation were so favorable to the rapid development 

 of the stock industry. The country lying between the Rio Grande and 

 the thirty-fifth parallel of latitude and between the ninety-eighth and 

 one hundred and fifth meridians is a successiou of prairies and plains, 

 rising gradually by successive broad steps from the coast to the table- 

 land of the Staked Plains at an altitude of about 4,000 feet. This 

 series of plains is broken by mountains only in the southern and south- 

 western portion and west of the Pecos River beyond their borders. 

 Of the 11>0,000 square miles embraced in this territory probably not 

 more than 10 per cent is adapted to successful agriculture under present 

 methods, although one-fifth or one-third of it is capable of conversion 

 into farm lands, and doubtless will be so converted at some future 

 period, when the farmer is able to preserve the abundant natural 

 resources of the region and profit thereby. 



At the time of the earliest settlement this Texas territory was for 

 the most part treeless, excepting along the streams and where the two 

 bodies of "cross timbers" entered it ou the north and where a wedge- 

 shaped tongue of the east Texan timber belt penetrates the prairies 

 south of Austin and San Antonio. The land was well covered with 

 grasses, and was grazed by immense herds of buffalo, wild horses, and 

 great numbers of deer and antelope. 



Among stockmen the tendency has been to look upon these wild 

 lands as never having been grazed until cattle and sheep were intro- 

 duced, but there is abundant evidence to show that they have always 

 been closely pastured. The early explorers differed in their accounts of 

 the luxuriance of the grass vegetation, but the differences were no 

 greater than can be accounted for by local or temporary causes, such as 

 variable seasonal rainfall, which occur at the present day. 



It is estimated that the southern buffalo herd contained not less than 

 four million head.* This vast number grazed in the district south of 

 the Platte River, retiring to the plains of western Texas and the Indian 

 Territory at the approach of winter, and turning northward again in 



*Smithson. Report Nati<m:il Mnseiim, 1887. The Exterminatiou of the Auierican 

 Bisou, p. 498 iiud foUowiug. Hoinaday. 



