190 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. 



tion, taking care to visit each promising spot 

 along the way where perchance food may be 

 found. This forage may be of green grass 

 quick grown from tlie melting snows and 

 genial sun, which even in March shows a fer- 

 vor unknown in Eastern lands, or it may be 

 the young shoots of rabbit brush, willows and 

 sage with an admixture of weeds. 



The herder usually has a wagon equipped 

 with a canvas cover, stove and commissary. 

 In this his home he is established and with it 

 he journeys in a desultory fashion, searching 

 right and left for subsistence for his flock. 

 There is a steadily intensifying spirit of op- 

 position to the nomadic sheep men on the part 

 of local settlers along streams and in the val- 

 leys of these mountain states, since the herds 

 eat the grass that would naturally belong to 

 settlers' horses and cows, and because they 

 sometimes pollute streams that must serve as 

 drinking water for the settlers and their ani- 

 mals. 



WAITING FOE GEASS TO COME. 



The herder can not hasten toward his cov- 

 eted destination, for when by drouth he is 

 driven from the desert the snow is yet cover- 

 ing his summer range, hence there may be a 

 trying period of journeying with -occasionally 

 very short feed. In fact journeying flocks not 

 unfrequently camp on each other's bed 

 grounds, one after the other in succession, 

 sometimes to the number of half a dozen. The 

 last comers find little to eat save the roots of 

 the grass. 



