CLIMATES AND SOILS. 23 



their possession. "Wild natural grasses, of succulent growth and 

 nutritious quality, abound in our prairies and open plains, while 

 our wooded regions, reduced to cultivation, readily yield the do- 

 mestic grasses in the richest abundance. In our cotton, rice, and 

 sugar growing latitudes, where little attention has been given to 

 the growth of cattle, or providing the grasses for them, they do 

 not thrive so well, but in the hill and mountain districts of those 

 States, with a proper regard to their provision, they nourish and 

 prove a profitable branch of husbandry. As yet, so intent have 

 been the people of the Southern States to seize upon the 

 most available portions of the soil for quick returns for their capi- 

 tal and labor, that the more elevated regions within them have 

 been neglected, until the idea has more or less prevailed, that even 

 for neat cattle they were unprofitable. But that delusion is fast 

 wearing away. Their climates are eminently healthful, their 

 soils, though broken, are good, their valleys are rich, their springs 

 and streams pure and abundant, and it only needs an increase of 

 their population, and the application of vigorous and intelligent 

 labor to convert those salubrious waste districts into the finest of 

 pastures and meadows, and speckle them with herds. So, 

 extending over all the ranges and spurs of the Alleganies, from 

 the mild temperatures of Georgia and Alabama, through the 

 Carolinas and Tennessee, the higher degrees of Kentucky, the 

 two Virginias, and Pennsylvania, those mountain regions may 

 become the great pastural country of the Atlantic States. So, 

 also, with the slopes and valleys of the Kocky Mountains and 

 Sierra Nevadas of the far West. As in the Highland districts of 

 Scotland, and their contiguous islands, and the neighboring Conti- 

 nent, but on an immensely larger scale, among all these Ameri- 

 can mountains, and plains, the lighter and more active races of 

 cattle may breed and range in multitudinous numbers, to be 

 driven and fed for market on the lower plains and cultivated 

 farms of the more populous grain growing States. 



