the desert. As a result of this warfare of vegetations, the plains
are to first disappear in favour of the prairies; and the prairies to
give way before the trees. These mutations all wait on rain; and as
the rain belt goes ever and ever westward, a strip of plains each
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.