ries, in which Miss Perry
had traveled with her family for three years.

Perry's Park is one of the great cattle-raising ranches in Colorado.
This, the youngest State in the Union, a Territory until quite
recently, has an area of about 68,000,000 acres, a great portion of
which, though rich in mineral wealth, is worthless either for stock or
arable farming, and the other or eastern part is so dry that crops can
only be grown profitably where irrigation is possible. This region is
watered by the South Fork of the Platte and its affluents, and, though
subject to the grasshopper pest, it produces wheat of the finest
quality, the yield varying according to the mode of cultivation from
eighteen to thirty bushels per acre. The necessity for irrigation,
however, will always bar the way to an indefinite extension of the area
of arable farms. The prospects of cattle-raising seem at present
practically unlimited. In 1876 Colorado had 390,728, valued at L2:13s.
per head, about half of which were imported as young beasts from Texas.
The climate is so fine and the pasturage so ample that shelter and
hand-feeding are never resorted to except in the case of imported
breeding stock from the Eastern States, which sometimes in severe
winters need to be fed in sheds for a short time. Mr. Perry devotes
himself mainly to the breeding of graded shorthorn bulls, which he
sells when young for L6 per head.

The cattle run at large upon the prairies; each animal being branded,
they need no herding, and are usually only mustered, counted, and the
increase branded in the summer. In the fall, when three or four years
old, they are sold lean or in tolerable condition to dealers who take
them by rail to Chicago, or elsewhere, where the fattest lots are
slaughtered for tinning or for consumption in the Eastern cities, while
the leaner are sold to farmers for feeding up during the winter. Some
of the wealthier stockmen take their best lots to Chicago themselves.
The Colorado cattle are either pure Texan or Spanish, or crosses
between the Texan and graded shorthorns. They are nearly all very
inferior animals, being bony and ragged. The herds mix on the vast
plains at will; along the Arkansas valley 80,000 roam about with the
freedom of buffaloes, and of this number about 16,000 are exported
every fall. Where cattle are killed for use in the mining districts
their average price is three cents per lb. In the summer thousands of
yearlings are