driven up from Texas, branded, and turned loose on the
prairies, and are not molested again till they are sent east at three
or four years old. These pure Texans, the old Spanish breed, weigh
from 900 to 1,000 pounds, and the crossed Colorado cattle from 1,000 to
1,200 pounds.

The "Cattle King" of the State is Mr. Iliff, of South Platte, who owns
nine ranches, with runs of 15,000 acres, and 35,000 cattle. He is
improving his stock; and, indeed, the opening of the dead-meat trade
with this country is giving a great impetus to the improvement of the
breed of cattle among all the larger and richer stock-owners. For this
enormous herd 40 men are employed in summer, about 12 in winter, and
200 horses. In the rare case of a severe and protracted snowstorm the
cattle get a little hay. Owners of 6,000, 8,000 and 10,000 head of
cattle are quite common in Colorado. Sheep are now raised in the State
to the extent of half a million, and a chronic feud prevails between
the "sheep men" and the "cattle men." Sheep-raising is said to be a
very profitable business, but its risks and losses are greater, owing
to storms, while the outlay for labor, dipping materials, etc., is
considerably larger, and owing to the comparative inability of sheep to
scratch away the snow from the grass, hay has to be provided to meet
the emergency of very severe snow-storms. The flocks are made up
mostly of pure and graded Mexicans; but though some flocks which have
been graded carefully for some years show considerable merit, the
average sheep is a leggy, ragged beast. Wether mutton, four and five
years old, is sold when there is any demand for it; but except at
Charpiot's, in Denver, I never saw mutton on any table, public or
private, and wool is the great source of profit, the old ewes being
allowed to die off. The best flocks yield an average of seven pounds.
The shearing season, which begins in early June, lasts about six weeks.
Shearers get six and a half cents a head for inferior sheep, and seven
and a half cents for the better quality, and a good hand shears from
sixty to eighty in a day. It is not likely that sheep-raising will
attain anything of the prominence which cattle-raising is likely to
assume. The potato beetle "scare" is not of much account in the
country of the potato beetle. The farmers seem much depressed by the
magnitude and persistency of the grasshopper pest which finds their
fields in the morning "as the garden of Eden