EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER 171 



Sand had virtually destroyed her iii&uit commerce and thrown her upon 

 her own resources. Manufactures had been growing, but it had been a 

 (difficult matter to sell an American article could a British one be had 

 lit any price, however extravagant. Anglomania was as prevalent 

 in those days as it is now. But the time did come when public opinion 

 forced everyone to wear goods of American manufacture, consequently 

 manufactures had a great spring and fine wool was in great demand. 

 Attention was now turned to the flocks of Livingston and Humphreys, 

 and rams and ewes of the pure breed, and even half bloods, sold at 

 high prices. Livingston sold lambs at $1,000 apiece. Humphreys 

 realized as much. A fresh importation of 1 ram from Spain sold for 

 $1,000, and about the same time Humphreys made a sale of 2 rams and 

 2 ewes for the unprecedented price of $1,500 each. The fever ran from 

 town to town and from farm to farm. Advertisements were accom- 

 panied with marvelous statements of the value of the Merino and its 

 wo >1 and the great profits in raising them. The barren hillsides gave 

 promise of rich returns for their scanty pasturage, and the worn-out 

 lands were to be enriched by the pasturing of sheep upon them, whose 

 fleeces were, in return, to enrich their owner. Farms that the owners 

 desired to dispose of were advertised as peculiarly adapted to the rais- 

 ing of Merino sheep. The most scrubby, common sheep that the coun- 

 try could produce were named after the most noted Spanish patriots. 

 Sloops that sailed from New York coastwise were named " Merino." 

 An honest old farmer of Hopewell, N. J., who raised half a bushel of 

 potatoes from one, called them Merino potatoes. A bull calf in Penn- 

 sylvania was guaranteed as of the genuine Merino breed; and a Dutch 

 farmer's wife of the State named her tenth child Merino Schmidt. 



The mania did not escape the notice of the wags, and an advertise- 

 ment appeared in a Baltimore paper offering for sale a large number 

 of the celebrated Tuscan improved breed, lineally descended from the 

 best breeds of the Golden Age, with fleeces as much superior to the finest 

 Merino as the Merino fleece is to the common marengo. 



But what makes the Tuscan fleece so invaluable and gives to the breed such incal- 

 culable value is that the fleeces are naturally endued with all the various colors, of 

 a more perfect and brilliant character and luster than can be imparted to them by 

 the most celebrated dyes, of the most beautiful glossy black; others of brilliant ver- 

 milion and scarlet; some of the splendid Tyrean purple, and some of the gaudy saf- 

 fron; also the seven original colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and 

 violet. And by arranging the threads of these several-colored fleeces in the loom in 

 their proper order and agreeably to their original refrangibility, the beautiful and 

 fashionable rainbow cloth is made, and it is only from the fleeces of the Tuscan shn-p 

 that the rainbow cloth can be made. Besides the immense emolument from th-se 

 sheep, they are the most delightful resource of intellectual enjoyment to philosophic 

 exjii-rimentali/mg minds, as gentlemen may amuse themselves in the production of 

 an -ndless variety of colored fleeces by skillfully blending the agents who are to 

 to weave the wool in nature's loom. 



And not to be behind Livingston, Humphreys, and others as patriots 

 and public benefactors, these sheep were placed at the low price of 

 $5,000 for rains and $500 to $1,500 for ewes. 



