No. 4.] SHEEP INDUSTRY. 21 



in the last lialf-centiiry. What everybody has done must be 

 right; still, the Massachusetts farmer will hardly claim to 

 be superior as a husbandman to the farmers in Holland, or 

 claim to be a better dairyman, and small flocks of superior 

 sheep are as thick in Holland as flocks of geese, and their low, 

 dani]) liclds are not as good for sheep as are the flelds and 

 hills of your State. 



Our grandmothers would have thought it hard lines if they 

 could not have had a few fleeces from which to clothe the 

 family. I warrant you have no com])laints on that score to- 

 day, and let us grant that our way is best, although personally 

 1 cannot subscribe to that idea. 



If I were to ask any of you what kind of slieep your fathers 

 kept, you would say " Why, the old native sheep." If I 

 question further, and ask where the old native sheep came 

 from and what they really were, I doubt if I should get any 

 rp])ly at all ; and it is a subject that I have never heard dis- 

 cussed among stock men, nor have I ever read anything that 

 seemed to comprehend the facts. 



Livingston, in 1807, said that along the Massachusetts 

 coast there were the Xarragansett sheep, but he does not tell 

 us where they came from ; probably he did not know. You 

 will all agree that they were not descended from any of the 

 English breeds. There were often black sheep among them, 

 but never a black-faced sheep. They resembled the Cheviot 

 a little, but they never had the Welsh breeding proclivities. 

 They had as little in appearance to point to a Spanish ances- 

 try as to the British Islands ; and the Indians, except in a 

 small part of the mountains in South America, had no do- 

 mestic animals whatever. There is little known about them, 

 and you must not place too much reliance on what T advance 

 as theory; the facts that I bring out are mattei-s of record, 

 which have been translated and published in our day. I 

 first heard the tale many years ago from the mouth of a 

 Jesuit, while sitting at his camp fire in the great north; 

 since then I have found confirmation of his story in the rec- 

 ords of his order, and have ]x^rsonally visited the places and 

 verified many of the statements. 



About the year 1535 a small party of French men and 



