BEEF FATTENING. 7? 



has been a success. The remark was made by the essayist, 

 I think, that cattle three years old could be raised in the 

 West for fifteen dollars. The past year cattle of that age 

 could be purchased for fifteen dollars, perhaps, but it was 

 from the difficulties arising in the Indian Territory. Large 

 ranchmen and small ranchmen were oblii^ed to leave because 

 they were unable to find pasturage for their cattle ; and 

 therefore they were compelled to sell them for whatever 

 they could get. Vast numbers of those cattle have been 

 forced upon the market at lower prices than yearlings could 

 be purchased for formerly. Texas yearlings have usually 

 brought from fifteen to twenty dollars, and, as the essayist 

 told us, the price on the ranches has been from forty to 

 fifty dollars a head for three and four year olds. 



In regard to refrigerated beef, I was not aware that it 

 was of necessity in a frozen condition, as the essayist says. 

 I stepped into a car from Chicago the other day at our 

 station, and handsomer beef I surely never saw. It was not 

 frozen, but it had been kept at a temperature just sufficient 

 to keep it fi'esh. I had the impression that our butchers 

 (I know it is the talk in the Boston market) thought that 

 beef should be thoroughly ripened before it was eaten ; that 

 it assumes a character which is desirable by having been 

 killed some little time. I certainly never ate nicer beef 

 than I have eaten in the mountains of California that had 

 hung in the open air a month. The outside of it was per- 

 fectly black and in places somewhat mouldy, but it was as 

 sweet, as juicy, and as tender as any beef I ever tasted. 

 Whether the refrigerator can succeed in keeping beef in that 

 condition I am not certain. We are in the habit on the 

 ranches at the present time, where it is possible, of getting 

 corn to feed our cattle. This is something new, however. 

 It is a demand of the people, and is to be complied with, 

 and we feed our cattle on corn for a short time before they 

 are shipped. They are driven, I suppose, from fifty to a 

 hundred miles to reach carriage ; and there are very few that 

 go into the Chicago market, or any of those markets, that 

 are not shipped from a distance ; and I suppose there is no 

 doubt of the fact that the irritation and weariness which are 

 induced by a long car ride must produce fever. It has often 



