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Show 626 WESTERN WILDS. living in Ohio. The Territory has all the faults of an old country, and few of its virtues. As a stock- rancher you have but two chances of success. The one adopted by most live Americans is to go in part-nership with one of the nobility. If you have business ability and a partner who can furnish the blue blood, respectability, local prestige and land, you may in time become a capitalist, and marry ten or twenty thousand sheep, with an incumbrance in the shape of a lady whose priest will rule her, and her father insist on an ante- nuptiaV contract that the children shall be reared in the " Holy Catholic faith." The other plan is to go with money enough to buy a thousand sheep and a herd- right that is to say, be a capitalist yourself. But do n't think of going to New Mexico to build up a fortune by hard work. The common fellows there can work for fifty cents a day, and live on jerked mutton and fleur. If you want to lead a wild harum- scarum sort of life for awhile, free from social restraints, where chastity is not a requisite for good society, and morals in general are somewhat relaxed, New Mexico is a splendid place to sow your wild oats. As to the crop to be reaped, I refer you to a very ancient authority. But if you think much of yourself, better set up your sheep ranche in Colorado or Wyoming, where there is not such an oppressive atmosphere of genie fina, and where the owner of two sheep is still one of the boys, and can dance with the daughter of the man who owns a thousand. In south- western Arizona a progressive community has been built up of late years, and thouOgh the fertile area is small,* there is still room for thousands more. Colorado I have described at some length in a previous chapter. It is, in my opinion, the most enlightened and progressive of all the far western communities ; though I doubt if it can eyer have the popula-tion that Dakota will some day contain. Idaho I know very little about, and of Montana practically still less. But it is universally agreed that they are not agricultural Territories. There are valleys in both which contain considerable good land, and large grazing tracts ; but mining will be the leading interest of both for some time. Taken as a whole, and allowing for every possible improvement in methods of farming and reclamation of desert lands, the whole vast interior, between longitude 100 and the Sierra Nevadas, can never average one acre in ten fit for the farmer ; and not more than half the rest is of any value for timber or grazing. And can such a region ever be filled by prosperous States, which shall rival those of the Mississippi valley? Never. All calculations as to the shifting of political power, made on the basis of new States, |
