CHAPTER VI. 



FIRST AMERICAN IMPORTATIONS, 



The business of grazing and feeding cattle for 

 market in the United States had its origin in the 

 valley of the South Branch of the Potomac River 

 in the state of Virginia during the closing years 

 of the eighteenth century. The War of the Revo- 

 lution was over; the independence of the colonies 

 was established. Trade and industry had begun 

 to thrive, and a profitable market for good beef 

 loomed up in Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia 

 and New York. The valley was populated by an in- 

 telligent, enterprising and self-reliant people fami- 

 lies that had inherited from a long line of ances- 

 tors, largely of British birth, a love of the soil, a 

 fondness for good horses, good dogs, good cattle, 

 and in general, the good things of life in the open. 

 Washington himself had set the example. Turning 

 from the presidency to the gentle arts of agricul- 

 ture at Mt. Vernon, he admonished his countrymen 

 that farming was at once "the most healthful, 

 most useful, and the noblest employment of man." 

 So over in the valley those who had contributed of 

 their blood and treasure to the colonial cause, now 

 "beat their swords into plow-shares, and their 

 spears into pruning-hooks." From the aborigines 



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