250 COST OF KEEPING ON PKAIRIES. 



settled, except on the edges and on water courses; and all the 

 sheep farmer needs in such situations is sufficient land for his 

 buildings, grain fields, and, — as his wealth and conveniences 

 increase — for pastures of artificial grass for the early spring 

 and late fall feed of his sheep. When the banks of the 

 streams and the clumps of wood-land are occupied by settlers, 

 they, in effect, have the permanent control of the interior 

 pasturage, often many miles in extent. I have been informed 

 of instances in Texas where an individual, or a small party of 

 individuals, have bought a narrow strip on each bank of a river 

 for a number of miles, and thus prevented the sale of and actually 

 threw out of market hundreds of thousands of acres which 

 were by this means cut off from all access to water, without 

 traveling, perhaps for miles, to the next river bank. But, in 

 truth, the vast ejftent of our Prairie lands defies all attempts 

 at monopoly. Even in a State comparatively as old as Dlinois 

 — containing at the last census a population of over one 

 piiUion seven hundred thousand persons, and probably 

 now containing 50,000 shee*^* — immense tracts of land, 

 owned in part by the Government, but principally by non- 

 resident owners, (" speculators,") lie open and free to the use 

 of all ; and there is now actually a class of nomadic shepherds 

 in that State who keep flocks of sheep, sometimes numbering 

 upward of two thousand eacjti, who, in the words of the dying 

 Son of the Mist, " Take no iire — give no stipend — buUd'no 

 hut — inclose no pasture — sow no grain." These men are 

 generally industrious Germans, who, after serving flock- 

 masters as shepherds for a year or two, invested their 

 earnings in enough sheep to commence flocks of their own. 

 They follow their sheep by day over the prairies, herding 

 them in little temporary inclosures at night to protect them 

 from wolves and dogs. In the fall they buy a field of corn, 

 drive their sheep to it for the winter, and in the spring 

 resume their wanderings. 



In all the new Western States, sheep have been foimd to 

 accliniate without the least difficulty.! In Texas in the 

 extreme South, in Minnesota in the extreme North, ki Cali- 

 fornia in the extreme West, and in every intermediate region 

 where they have been introduced, sheep remain signally 

 healthy, thrive to the highest degree, produce as much wool 



* By the United States Census of 1860, there were then 33,823 sheep in Illinois, 

 and they have increased much more rapidly than ever before, since tliat period. 



t For a letter showing how sheep are got Into the new States — how a sheep 

 establishment is started — and how the first winter is got over, see Appendix E. 



