SHEEP HUSBANDRY IN THE SOUTH. 77 



in producing beef (or pork*) for exportation to foreign countries. Its im- 

 mense natural pastures the profusion and cheapness with which Indian 

 corn can be produced on its virgin soils give it an advantage which in- 

 creased transportation by no means counterbalances. The question then 

 arises Why, for the same reasons, cannot the vast North-western plains 

 produce wool more cheaply than the South, and undersell her in our own 

 and the foreign markets 1 In the first place, the western pastures that 

 is to say, the wild or natural ones which produce beef so cheaply, are, 

 by reason of the coarseness and rankness of their verdure, not adapted ft: 

 tlie growing of sliccp. Secondly, the shortness and mildness of the south- 

 ern w r inter give a decided advantage in wool growing, by affording green 

 winter feed an advantage not profitably available probably, on an extend- 

 ed scale, with large grass-feeding animals. Again, in the North-west, 

 though there is less snow, the winter is about as long, for all the practical 

 purposes of husbandry, as in New-York.t Killing frosts come as early in 

 autumn ; the naked ground is frozen as solidly, and far more deeply ; and 

 verdure puts forth but little if any earlier in the spring. The South then 

 possesses the same great advantage with the North-west in the production 

 of wool cheap lands ; and, superadded to this, she has the short, mild 

 winters, which give her a decided advantage over both the North and 

 North- west. She has a marked advantage over the Northern and Eastern 

 States in both particulars, and, instead of importing manufactured wooln 

 from them, she aught to supply them, by export, with at least the raw ma- 

 terial. And she will do this at no distant day, unless her sons are content, 

 in the great struggle and battle of industrial interests, to sacrifice their 

 own by apathy or irresolution. 



* I have not alluded to the rearing of swine any more fully, as they are but partially a grazing animal. 

 But if the position assumed in the text be correct, it is another argument in favor of devoting your lands 

 to the production of surplus wool, instead of surplus corn. 



f The winter feeding of sheep in New Yorjt has already been stated to average about one hundred *< 



