EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. 133 



driven through Portugal ami shipped from Portuguese ports to foivign 

 countries. Adventurers of every degree engaged in this business, the 

 most noted one being George III, king of Great Britain, who sent his 

 secret agents into Spain. These purchased a few inferior animals, 

 smuggled them out of the kingdom, drove them across Portugal and 

 shipped them from Lisbon to England. When the Spanish Government 

 realized the fact that the German states were rapidly improving their 

 fine wools, that France was doing the same, and that England was also 

 bent on the same project, all through the superior Spanish Merino, it 

 put forth efforts to stem the disaster which was menacing the interests 

 of the country, by repeating the stringent orders against the exporta- 

 tion of any more fine Merino sheep. It was a feeble effort, but it was 

 all that feeble Spain could do. By a royal decree, June 24, 1798, it was 

 ordered that owing to the high price of flesh and wool in Spain under 

 no pretext should it be permitted to export sheep from the kingdom. 



This order might do very well as against the king's own loyal subjects, 

 but it did not avail against Napoleon's bayonets and the hunger of his 

 men, nor the rapacity of his marshals, who, it is said, drove over 200,000 

 of the finest sheep of Spain into France in the years 1809 and 1810. 

 Again, in December, 1810, the Council of Begency of Spain prohibited 

 the exportation of sheep, and again in 1816, after the overthrow of 

 Napoleon had restored the Bourbons to their thrones in Europe, the king 

 of Spain resolved that " under no title or pretext shall it be permitted 

 to export Merino sheep." Similar royal orders followed in 1819 and 

 1827. These later orders were of little moment, for nearly every coun- 

 try then equaled, if it did not excel, it in the quality of its wool, and all 

 had within their boundaries better mutton. 



We have no record of any action for the improvement of our Ameri- 

 can sheep by the introduction of the Spanish Merino until 1785, when 

 the "Society for the Promotion of Agriculture 77 of South Carolina 

 offered a medal for the first flock of Merino sheep kept in the State. 

 No response seems to have been made to this offer, and no importations 

 of Merino sheep are known to have been made to any of the States 

 until eight years later, when, in 1793, William Foster, of Boston, Mass., 

 a young gentleman of means, being on his return from Spain, " with 

 much difficulty and risk," got out of that kingdom, " smuggled, 77 in 

 plain words, and brought home with him three Merino sheep two 

 ewes and a ram. Foster purchased these three sheep of a drover from 

 the Sierra Morena on condition that he should bring them down with 

 the drove for the shambles and deliver them outside the city to a cer- 

 tain fisherman, who smuggled them onboard the ship Bald Eagle, Capt. 

 John Atkins. Soon after his arrival at home Mr. Foster was obliged 

 to sail for France and left the three Merinos with his friend Andrew 

 Craigie, of Cambridge, as a present, who, not appreciating their value, 

 killed and ate them, pronouncing the meat as very delicious. Some 

 years after Mr. Foster met Mr. Craigie at an auction near Boston buy- 

 ing a Merino ram for $1,000. 



