20 SHEEP INDUSTRY OF THE UNITED STATES 



the United States, and such the introduction of slave labor upon their 

 soil." Spanish sheep were among the stores landed ; how many is not 

 known. From that day until Florida passed into the possession of the 

 United States Spanish sheep were, at various times, introduced into 

 the province, and to-day, in some parts of the State and in southern 

 Georgia, the sheep preserve traces of their Spanish origin. 



Spanish sheep were introduced into California in 1773, and, under the 

 care of the Catholic priests in charge of the missions, increased rapidly, 

 and woolens were made of a coarse kind. Vancouver, who visited the 

 coast in 1792, says : 



The looms, though rudely wrought, were tolerahly well contrived, and had been 

 made by the Indians. The produce is wholly applied to the clothing of the converted 

 Indians. I saw some of the cloth, which was by no means despicable, and had it 

 received the advantage of fulling, would have been a very decent sort of clothing. 



Diego de Borico, governor of California from 1794 to 1800, made a 

 special effort in 1796- 7 97 to promote the raising of sheep in connection 

 with the manufacture of cloth, and laws were enacted providing that 

 good sheep be selected and propagated. Two hundred were distributed 

 at Los Angeles in 1796. Every settler at San Jose was required to keep 

 three sheep to every other animal. The breed at San Francisco was 

 Merino, and better than elsewhere, and had increased in numbers from 

 1,700 in 1790 to over 6,000 in 1797. In 1797 Borico ordered that blan- 

 kets made at the missions should be used at the Presidio, and 110 more 

 obtained from Mexico ; but in 1799 he disapproved of the friars' scheme 

 of building a fulling-mill. 



The extent of sheep husbandry conducted by the Catholic priests at 

 the missions may be realized when it is stated that at seventeen of these 

 establishments, located on a line near the seacoast and extending from 

 San Diego to San Francisco, a distance of 500 miles, there were, in 1825, 

 the period when the missions were at the height of their prosperity, an 

 aggregate of 1,003,970 sheep, not including flocks of sheep owned by 

 the ranchers, which were quite as numerous as those possessed by the 

 church. 



Old writers, and those who base their statements on old authorities, 

 speak of these sheep first introduced into Mexico, Florida, and Califor- 

 nia as the Merino sheep, sheep of Castile, or the best sheep of Spain, 

 but some recent writers affirm that they were not the Merino but the 

 common sheep of Spain. George W. Bond, in a communication to the 

 Boston Society of Natural History, May 17, 1876, stated that he had 

 found indubitable confirmation of the opinion that the sheep of Spanish 

 America, both North and South (with possibly some admixture from 

 Chile), originated from the churro, or coarse sheep, of Spain, and not 

 from the Merino. The churros are, according to Lasteyrie, larger, 

 longer, and higher upon the legs; they have a head smaller and more 

 tapering; these parts of their body (legs and head) are without wool; 

 they are of a robust habit j they are more easy to nourish j they bear 



