of four
months near agencies for issuing purposes added to the cost, and was
charged to that particular department of our business.

George Edwards and my active partner agreed to restock our beef ranch
in the Outlet, and I returned to Missouri. I make no claim of being
the first cowman to improve the native cattle of Texas, yet forty
years' keen observation has confirmed my original idea,--that
improvement must come through the native and gradually. Climatic
conditions in Texas are such that the best types of the bovine race
would deteriorate if compelled to subsist the year round on the open
range. The strongest point in the original Spanish cattle was their
inborn ability as foragers, being inured for centuries to drouth, the
heat of summer, and the northers of winter, subsisting for months on
prickly pear, a species of the cactus family, or drifting like game
animals to more favored localities in avoiding the natural afflictions
that beset an arid country. In producing the ideal range animal it
was more important to retain those rustling qualities than to gain a
better color, a few pounds in weight, and a shortening of horns and
legs, unless their possessor could withstand the rigors of a variable
climate. Nature befriends the animal race. The buffalo of Montana
could face the blizzard, while his brother on the plains of Texas
sought shelter from the northers in canons and behind sand-dunes,
guided by an instinct that foretold the coming storm.

I accompanied my car of thoroughbred bulls and unloaded them at the
first station north of Fort Worth. They numbered twenty-five, all
two-year-olds past, and were representative of three leading beef
brands of established reputation. Others had tried the experiment
before me, the main trouble being in acclimation, which affects
animals the same as the human family. But by wintering them at their
destination, I had hopes of inuring the importation so that they would
withstand the coming summer, the heat of which was a sore trial to a
northern-bred animal. Accordingly I made arrangements with a farmer
to feed my car of bulls during the winter, hay and grain both being
plentiful. They had cost me over five thousand dollars, and rather
than risk the loss of a single one by chancing them on the range, an
additional outlay of a few hundred dollars was justified. Limiting the
corn fed to three barrels to the animal a month, with plenty of rough
feed, ought to bring them through t