THE PASTORAL LANDS OF AMERICA. 301 
or in a stage of growth not productive of the highest results. If this 
should be the case, how stupid to condemn the maize for the ignorance 
of the cultivator. If it is found to contain too little nutriment for its 
bulk, cr too small amount of the flesh-forming element, the suggestion 
found in the practice of some, of giving a small amount of more highly ~ 
concentrated nuiriment in connection with corn-fodder, is eminently 
wise. This is a deficiency easily remedied. While corn is our national 
crop, less fastidious in the cireumstances of its growth than almost any 
other, and capable of yielding so largely under the proverbial neglect 
which characterizes our culture, let not this fodder be discarded until 
something of greater practical value is found, the superiority of which 
has been actually demonstrated under local circumstances of soil, climate, - 
and eultivation. 
THE PASTORAL LANDS OF AMERICA. . 
The interior of every continent comprises vast areas of dry and com- 
paratively arid regions, where the rain- and snow fall is very small, and, 
as a consequence, where flocks and herds can graze both summer and 
winter. The great steppes of Asia furnish us the most notable instance 
of this kind, Since the times when “Abel was a keeper of sheep,” and 
Abraham, Lot, and Laban had flocks and herds, the great elevated 
table-lands and plateaus of Asia have furnished pasturage for countless 
numbers of cattle and sheep. The Report of the Paris Exposition of 
1866 estimates the production of wool in Asia at 470,000,000 pounds 
annually, which is produced exclusively by winter grazing, and without 
the stimulus of civilization, which its manufacturing and consumption 
demand. The grazing regions of Australia, South Africa, and South 
America have developed a wool production of astonishing magnitude 
within the past twenty years. In North America the region answering 
to the several countries named is that vast interior comprising both 
Slopes of the Rocky Mountains, and embracing more than one-half of 
the total area of the United States. This immense pasture land extends 
from the Mexican boundary on the south to the British Possessions on 
the north, and from the twenty-first parallel of latitude west from Wash- 
ington to the Pacific Ocean, and embraces an area of 1,000,000,000 
acres. This country was the favorite herding ground of the buffalo in 
the pre-historic ages. Their bones lie bleaching in all directions, and 
their paths, deeply worn, cover the whole plains like a net-work, while 
their ‘ wallows,” deep pits in the ground, are still to be seen. Ik, ante- 
lope, and deer still feed here, and the mountain sheep are yet to be seen 
on the mountain sides and in the more secluded valleys of the Sierra 
Madre range—proving conclusively that this region has afforded winter 
pasturage from time immemorial. 
This country is bisected into nearly equal portions by the lofty and 
snowy range of the Sierra Madre, or Mother Mountains, of the old 
Spanish explorers. This mountain range, in its windings, measures 
fully fifteen hundred miles in length, and from its snow-covered tops a 
thousand streams take their rise and plentifully water its mountain 
slopes. It is here that the Rio Grande, the Red, the Arkansas, the 
Plattes, the Yellowstone, and the Missouri on the east, and the Colum- 
bia, the Sacramento, the Humboldt, the Green, and the Colorado on the 
west, with their many tributaries, take their sources in the everlasting 
snows. 
