h
year surrenders its aridity, and the prairies and then the trees
press on and take new ground.

These facts should contain some virtue of interest; the more since
with the changes chronicled, come also changes in the character of
both the inhabitants and the employments of these regions. With a
civilised people extending themselves over new lands, cattle form
ever the advance guard. Then come the farms. This is the procession
of a civilised, peaceful invasion; thus is the column marshalled.
First, the pastoral; next, the agricultural; third and last, the
manufacturing;--and per consequence, the big cities, where the
treasure chests of a race are kept. Blood and bone and muscle and
heart are to the front; and the money that steadies and stays and
protects and repays them and their efforts, to the rear.

Forty years ago about all that took place west of the Mississipi of a
money-making character was born of cattle. The cattle were worked in
huge herds and, like the buffalo supplanted by them, roamed in
unnumbered thousands. In a pre-railroad period, cattle were killed
for their hides and tallow, and smart Yankee coasters went constantly
to such ports as Galveston for these cargoes. The beef was left to
the coyotes.

Cattle find a natural theatre of existence on the plains. There,
likewise, flourishes the pastoral man. But cattle herding, confined
to the plains, gives way before the westward creep of agriculture.
Each year beholds more western acres broken by the plough; each year
witnesses a diminution of the cattle ranges and cattle herding. This
need ring no bell of alarm concerning a future barren of a beef
supply. More cattle are the product of the farm-regions than of the
ranges. That ground, once range and now farm, raises more cattle now
than then. Texas is a great cattle State. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Iowa, and Missouri are first States of agriculture. The area of
Texas is about even with the collected area of the other five. Yet
one finds double the number of cattle in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Iowa, and Missouri than in Texas, to say nothing of tenfold the sheep
and hogs. No; one may be calm; one is not to fall a prey to any
hunger of beef.

While the farms in their westward pushing do not diminish the cattle,
they reduce the cattleman and pinch off much that is romantic and
picturesque. Between the farm and the wire fence, the cowboy, as
once he flourished, has been modified, subdued,