One who has seen any thing of these enormous Plains can but speculate on their Future. I came to the conclusion that in a few years they will be the Australia of North America. And as their soil & climate are very much better, they will support, at a far cheaper take, a much greater number of millions of sheep & cattle. In the Valley of the Platte for five hundred miles, & down as far as Denver, though the climate is too dry for agricultural purposes, still the herbage is to abundant & nutritious, that even in winter crossed out? when it's all dried up into the form of natural hay, crossed out? head of cattled are turned out to fatten upon it, which they do readily without any shelter or help from artifical food.
As you go further south you get some regions still better adapted to grazing & sheep-farming, & some not to food, till you come to Texas, in which enormous numbers of horned cattle are raised already. That Nature does herself supply every thing that is needed is proved by this having been the home of the Buffalo, which has ever been covering these Plains with numbers beyond belief. It becomes then a kind of rule of Three unclear; If Nature, unaided, supported without fail so many millions of large herbivorous animals, how many more will she support when aided by the care & forethought of man. Convert in your mind the countless herds of Buffalo into sheep & oxen; & then multiply