332 MY SPORTING HOLIDAYS 



Boyce, general manager of the X.I.T. ranch ; these 

 letters being the registered ranch brand and mark 

 of ownership of the Capitol cattle. 



I spent ten days in his company during the delight- 

 ful weather of a Texas Indian summer, driving and 

 riding to and fro for a distance of 700 miles, inspecting 

 a herd of 100,000 cattle dispersed through the fenced 

 pastures of this great property. I say ' great ' advisedly, 

 for the fencing and the pastures were in due propor- 

 tion to the acreage. There was a barbed- wire fence 

 on the western boundary of the X.I.T. domain 200 

 miles long in a single straight line. The so-called 

 pastures, also wire-fenced, were from twenty to thirty 

 miles square, mostly consisting of absolutely flat 

 prairie growing splendid natural feeding for stock. 

 A young fence-rider, new to the country, was on one 

 occasion lost in the largest of these pastures for two 

 days and a night. 



The introduction of barbed-wire fencing into Texas 

 in the 'eighties was not accomplished without disturb- 

 ance. The Capitol Company had a direct title to its 

 lands for ' services rendered,' and so had a full legal 

 right to fence. But when other open lands were 

 extensively fenced by enterprising syndicates and 

 companies the trouble began. The original pastoral 

 population, with a wide and comprehensive view of 

 the situation, engendered, no doubt, by the climate 

 and the wild, free life, held that all unfenced public 

 State lands, except where special title had been 

 obtained, were common property. The ' Free Grass ' 

 movement was accordingly organized, and lawless 

 mobs of ' fence- cutters ' destroyed thousands of miles 

 of fence by way of relieving their feelings. They were 

 in due course forcibly restrained by the Executive, 

 and legislation on the subject has been enacted. 



