WESTEEN CATTLE LANDS. 



I. 



YEAR BY YEAR do the great cattle-grazing grounds of the 

 Far West attract a larger influx of men of birth and education 

 from the Old Country men, too, probably endowed with more 

 vigour of frame than might be expected as the outcome of 

 those refinements of life with which in England even the 

 country gentleman is wont to surround himself. Their hopes, 

 at all events, are large, and their capacity for labour quite on 

 a par with their power of investment. They bear with them a 

 sum of money that, maybe, would only suffice them for one more 

 year's flutter on their native soil ; but upon which they intend 

 to build, if not a fortune, at least a competency, in as few years 

 as, they read, others have done before then to summer abroad 

 and winter at home, on the firm basis of a well-established and 

 increasing herd. With these aspirations and the more con- 

 fidence in themselves the better, they are in a very few days 

 transported from the society and surroundings which make men 

 gentle if no little fond of self, into a world as unlike their own 

 as an English-speaking world can be. The first plunge will 

 send a shock through their very marrowbones ; but they shake 

 their heads and set their teeth as they rise to the surface 

 striking out with all the determination of men who have 

 plunged to swim and not to drown. The older they are the 

 more difficult the shock to meet and overcome. Youth, though 

 thinner-skinned, rises more quickly to the surface, warms itself 

 again readily in the sunshine of hope, and shakes off the chill 

 ere the system is penetrated. Maturity suffers indeed where 



