RANCH LIFE AND THE HUNTING-TRAIL 



V The Cattle Country of the Far West 



-■i^"i HE trreat prazine lands of the West lie in what is known 

 -^ as the arid belt, which stretches from British America on 

 the north to Mexico on the south, through the middle of the 

 United States. It includes New Mexico, part of Arizona, 

 Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and the western portion of 

 Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota. It must not be understood by 

 this that more cattle are to be found here than elsewhere, for the contrary 

 is true, it being a fact often lost sight of that the number of cattle raised 

 on the small, thick-lying farms of the fertile Eastern States is actually 

 many times greater than that of those scattered over the vast, barren 

 ranches of the far West; for stock will always be most plentiful in districts 

 where corn and other winter food can be grown. But in this arid belt, 

 and in this arid belt only, — save in a few similar tracts on the Pacific 

 slope, — stock-raising is almost the sole industry, except in the mountain 

 districts where there is mining. The whole region is one vast stretch of 

 grazing country, with only here and there spots of farm-land, in most 

 places there being nothing more like agriculture than is implied in the 

 cutting of some tons of wild hay or the planting of a garden patch for 

 home use. This is especially true of the northern portion of the region, 

 which comprises the basin of the Upper Missouri, and with which alone I 

 am familiar. Here there are no fences to speak of, and all the land north 

 of the Black Hills and the Big Horn Mountains and between the Rockies 

 and the Dakota wheat-fields might be spoken of as one gigantic, unbroken 

 pasture, where cowboys and branding-irons take the place of fences. 



