THE SPLEXIC FEVER. ^3 



of cattle, varying from two to twelve hundred, and then drive at the rate of eight or ten 

 miles a day, through unsettled lands, a distance of six to nine hundred miles ; always 

 watching lest their cattle and horses be stampeded, or their own scalps be taken by wild In 

 dians Storms and herds of buffaloes are minor causes tending to scatter the drover s 

 property. It is not uncommon for a heavy percentage of animals to be lost from the 

 several causes named. 



Notwithstanding the waste in flesh and lives among stock on the New Orleans route, 

 and the hardships to be endured by drovers in the Southwest, the prices realized for Texan 

 steers, on reaching the great markets of America, prove, in many instances, highly 

 remunerative. 



The scarcity of cattle in the West, especially since the war; the tempting prospects 

 of utilizing thousands and tens of thousands of acres of open and unreclaimed prairie 

 lands; and the constitutional soundness of Texan cattle, which enables them individually 

 to withstand influences which are destructive to other stock, are all causes which tend 

 to favor the investment of western capital in such stock. 



The current has been too strong for ordinary State legislation; and early, during the 

 past spring, a strong tide set in, which brought large herds into the West, through New 

 Orleans and Cairo, or, via Abilene, to St. Louis, Quincy, Chicago, Cincinnati, and to many 

 grazing farms between those points. 



The people of Illinois were warned by Mr. D. G. Emerson, of Vandalia, in a letter 

 to the Chicago Tribune of the 26th of May. Circumstances have tended to give a historical 

 worth to that brief communication. Mr. Emerson said: 



Having been a constant reader of your valuable paper for many years, and wishing to promote the general 

 good and prosperity of our great and growing State, I would call the attention of farmers and cattle-growers to the 

 following facts: While at Centralia yesterday I saw a very long train of stock cars iilled with Texas and with Indiana 

 oxen on their way to Iroquois County, there to be fattened on the rich prairies ; and I learned that there were in the 

 lot fourteen hundred head of old, worn-out oxen, bringing the Spanish fever with them. A writer in the Missouri 

 Democrat has described this disease as contagions, and says that it causes the destruction of our home cattle wherever 

 these Texas cattle are taken. 



I arrived in Chicago on the 1st of June, the day on which Mr. Emerson s letter was 

 published, and wrote to the Chicago Tribune, communicating information which had been 

 furnished me by the Commissioner of Agriculture, and which indicated that, while trust 

 worthy and appalling reports of the Spanish fever had been furnished by the people of 

 Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, and even Illinois, the Texas people were indignant at the 

 imputations cast on their herds, just as the Russians were when the rinderpest was 

 attributed to importations from their country. 



Although the subject of meat preservation had brought me to America, it was only 

 because I had for years striven, and to a certain extent striven in vain, to secure rational 

 regulations of the cattle traffic for the prevention of contagious diseases in my own coun 

 try ; and it was a matter of deep interest to me to find that similar dangers threatened 

 the stock owners of the West. 



The abundant influx into Illinois of Gulf Coast cattle was soon followed by notices of 

 ravages by disease at Cairo and elsewhere; but none were heeded, until it was reported 

 on the 27th of July that Mr. E. Richardson, of Farina, had written to Governor Oglesby 

 in regard to the numerous deaths among the cattle of the inhabitants of his district, 

 and that eight to ten a day were dying. Mr. John L. Hancock, of the firm of Cragin 



