mountain barriers, was the rich stock-breeding ground lying
between the Delaware and the Susquehanna rivers, a region
occupied by the settlers familiarly known as the Pennsylvania
Dutch. In this famous belt, running from Pennsylvania into
Virginia, originated the historic pack-horse trade with the "far
Indians" of the Ohio Valley. Here, in the first granary of
America, Germans, Scotch-Irish, and English bred horses worthy of
the name. "Brave fat Horses" an amazed officer under Braddock
called the mounts of five Quakers who unexpectedly rode into camp
as though straight "from the land of Goshen." These animals,
crossed with the Indian "pony" from New Spain, produced the wise,
wiry, and sturdy pack-horse, fit to transport nearly two hundred
pounds of merchandise across the rough and narrow Alleghany
trails. This animal and the heavy Conestoga horse from the same
breeding ground revolutionized inland commerce.

The first American cow pony was not without his cowboy. Though
the drivers were not all of the same type and though the
proprietors, so to speak, of the trans-Alleghany pack-horse trade
came generally from the older settlements, the bulk of the hard
work was done by a lusty army of men not reproduced again in
America until the picturesque figure of the cow-puncher appeared
above the western horizon. This breed of men was nurtured on the
outer confines of civilization, along the headwaters of the
Susquehanna, the Potomac, the James, and the Broad--the country
of the "Cowpens." Rough as the wilderness they occupied, made
strong by their diet of meat and curds, these Tatars of the
highlands played a part in the commercial history of America that
has never had its historian. In their knowledge of Indian
character, of horse and packsaddle lore, of the forest and its