WESTERN CATTLE LANDS. 341 



narrative, discussion, and repartee in a cow-ranche arc, to put it 

 mildly, more pronounced than brilliant. It is certainly not 

 among a bevy of his intimate acquaintances that you would 

 credit a cowboy with the better side of his nature. Take him 

 separately, and his good qualities seldom fail to discover them- 

 selves. Indeed, the chances are that ere long you will come to 

 the conclusion that the genus cowboy is by no means the least 

 favourable type of Western life. He at least is not devoured 

 by the all-absorbing fever for money-making. He likes well 

 enough to make it, it is true ; but only, sailor like, that he may 

 spend it. The rest of the mass of men with whom the new- 

 comer is likely to come in contact worship the almighty dollar 

 with a fervour in which their whole soul is wrapped, look upon 

 its possession as the summumn bonum of life and as the chief 

 claim to worthiness, make its attainment their every thought 

 by day, lend to their idol such scanty time as they can afford 

 for dreaming by night, and crave after it madly —for what ? — 

 that they may have it to make it a basis for earning more. 



III. 



If you would see the prairie wearing its happiest aspect, you 

 should be on it in the months of May or June, the period in 

 which the cowboys do most of their work — when Nature is at 

 her greenest and freshest, and before the sun has withered the 

 grass or parched the soil. " Young man, go West ! " have 

 shouted the railway companies for years past, beguiling 

 thousands of hapless youths to embark upon a career for which 

 neither by education nor physique are they in any degree 

 fitted. ' Young man, go East," is their motto and wail till 

 opportunity shall take them back, sadder, wiser, and no richer 

 for the hardships and disappointments of the vaunted El 

 Dorado. But in early summer the great prairies that still 

 remain for the sole use of cattlemen and horsemen are not only 

 picturesque but offer to those whose work is upon them a 



