CATTLE-GROWING OUT WEST. 79 



in Chicago at seven cents, net weight. My experience 

 in sheep has not been so extensive as in cattle. I think, 

 however, that the short, sweet grass and the dry climate 

 here is especially adapted to raising sheep. I am con- 

 fident, from my experience, that this trans-Missouri 

 country can defy all competition in the production of 

 wool, mutton, beef, and horses." 



Alexander Major says : " I have been grazing cattle 

 on the Plains and in the mountains for twenty years. 

 I have during that time never had less than 500 head 

 work-cattle, and for two winters, those of 1857 and 

 1858, I wintered 1500 head of heavy work-oxen on the 

 Plains each winter. My experience extends from El 

 Paso, on the Rio Grande, to one hundred miles north 

 of Port Benton, Montana. Our stock is worked hard 

 during the summer, and comes to the winter herding- 

 ground thin. Then it is grazed without shelter, hay 

 and grain being unknown. By spring the cattle are 

 all in good working order, and many of them fat enough 

 for beef. I have often sold as high as 33 J per cent, of 

 a drove of work-oxen for beef that were thin the fall 

 before, that had fattened on the winter grass. During 

 these twenty years the firm with which I was connected 

 wintered many cattle in Missouri and Arkansas on hay 

 and corn, and I am sure the percentage of loss of those 

 wintered in this country in all the valleys of the trans- 

 Missouri country is less than it was in the States with 

 food and shelter. From my twenty years' experience, 

 I say without hesitation that all the country west of 

 the Missouri River is one vast pasture, affording un- 

 equalled summer and winter pasturage, where sheep, 



