6 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



herd ;" a title which some of the readers of the American 

 Agriculturist need not to be told belongs to Mark R. Cock- 

 rill. 



Mr. Cockrill's sheep walk is at and near his residence, 

 seven miles west of Nashville, the drive to which is over 

 one of the fine smooth Macadamized turnpikes which lead 

 out of that city of rocks in every direction. 



He was born on the banks of the Cumberland River, 

 near the place where he now lives, some fifty-seven years 

 ago, at which time all the uncultivated land in that region 

 was filled with immense cane-brakes, intersected here and 

 there with buffalo roads and Indian trails, upon which 

 some of the early settlers paid a higher toll than we do 

 now upon these paved ones. Mr. Cockrill is one of those 

 western woodsmen that in his young days could outrun 

 an Indian, or outclimb a bear. He is medium size, spare 

 built, "smart as a steel trap," with a great flow of pleas- 

 ing conversation, and unbounded hospitality, and in whose 

 family the visitor cannot but feel at home and comfort- 

 able. He owns sixteen hundred acres of land, mostly very 

 rough limestone hills, in places almost, and occasionally, 

 quite bare of soil; and a small tract of very rich river 

 bottom (interval) land. Fifteen hundred acres (counting 

 the bare rocks), and including the woodland, are in grass, 

 the most of which is Kentucky blue grass. He usually 

 plants about 50 acres of corn, which affords him as much 

 as he needs. The corn land is exceedingly rich natural soil, 

 on the banks of Richland Creek, near the Cumberland. 



The land occupied by Mr. C, is composed of twelve dif- 

 ferent farms, which he has bought up since 1835, at which 

 time there were not ten acres of cultivated grasses upon 

 the whole ; and if the farms ever were good, it was long 

 time ago, neither are the buildings worth bragging about. 

 The fact is, he has been so intent upon providing pastur- 

 age and accumulating acres, that with the personal atten- 

 tion that he pays to his flocks, together with the care of 

 2,000 acres of cotton plantations in Mississippi, upon 

 which he works 135 hands, he finds little time to devote 

 to ornamental improvement. 



