8 Hunting Trips of a Ranchman 



it from the Mexicans whom they dispossessed. It 

 has only become a prominent feature of Western 

 life during the last score of years. When the Civil 

 War was raging, there were hundreds of thousands 

 of bony, half wild steers and cows in Texas, whose 

 value had hitherto been very slight; but toward 

 the middle of the struggle they became a most im- 

 portant source of food supply to both armies, and 

 when the war had ended, the profits of the business 

 were widely known and many men had gone into it. 

 At first the stock-raising was all done in Texas, 

 and the beef-steers, when ready for sale, were annu- 

 ally driven north along what became a regular cat- 

 tle trail. Soon the men of Kansas and Colorado 

 began to start ranches, and Texans who were get- 

 ting crowded out moved their herds north into these 

 lands, and afterward into Wyoming. Large herds 

 of yearling steers also were, and still are, driven 

 from the breeding ranches of the South to some 

 Northern range, there to be fattened for three years 

 before selling. The cattle trail led through great 

 wastes, and the scores of armed cowboys who, 

 under one or two foremen, accompanied each herd, 

 had often to do battle with bands of hostile Indians ; 

 but this danger is now a thing of the past, as, indeed, 

 will soon be the case with the cattle trail itself, 

 for year by year the grangers steadily press west- 

 ward into it, and when they have once settled in 

 a place, will not permit the cattle to be driven 

 across it. 



In the northern country the ranches vary greatly 



