88 AMERICAN CATTLK. 



The subject is a new one in our agricultural economy. Vast 

 spaces of these now wild lands, covered with a short and 

 abundant herbage, fed with limited streams of water, and unfitted 

 for profitable tillage crops, must be owned in large tracts, and 

 sparsely populated. Their distance from a dense population will 

 preclude the possibility of taking their surplus grains to market, 

 at a profit, even if they could be profitably raised, and they can 

 hardly be so profitably used as to stock them with cattle. They 

 can breed, and graze while young, on the broad plains, and when 

 fit for market, be driven far away down to the more fertile districts, 

 and fattened, as the Scottish Highlanders drive theirs to the 

 richer lowlands, and to England. Our herdsmen of the plains 

 and mountains would be at a far greater distance from their 

 markets then the graziers of Scotland, but that distance is not 

 insurmountable, nor over expensive. 



This is looking somewhat into the future, we admit, and by 

 some it may be thought chimerical ; but when we have seen, 

 within twenty years past, California discovered ; a State made 

 of it ; two other States, and more organized territories, soon to 

 become States with them, adjoining it ; several traveled routes 

 for vast caravans of emigrants, and merchandise, and stage 

 coaches passing over them ; a railroad under construction and to 

 be completed within the next five years, across the continent ; 

 telegraph lines, and the appendages of wealth and civilization 

 introduced with an energy and rapidity hitherto unparalleled* in 

 the annals of human progress ; it is not too much to assume that 

 an enlightened agricultural interest will soon direct its efforts 

 thitherward, and plant itself firmly and permanently beside the 

 various mining and other enterprises which are already estab- 

 lished, and becoming thicker and more substantial continually. 

 In view of these possibilities probabilities, rather we need no 

 further apology for the space we shall occupy in introducing this 

 valuable foreign race of cattle to American study and attention. 



