"The main valley of the North Platte, two hundred miles from its mouth to where it debouches through the Black Hills out on to the great plains, is an average of ten miles wide. Nearly all this area--two thousand square miles--is covered with a dense growth of grass, yielding thousands of tons of hay. The bluffs bordering these intervals are rounded and grass-grown, gradually smoothing out into great grassy plains, extending north and south as far as the eye can see. "Of the country, Alexander Majors says, in a letter to the writer of this article: 'The favorite wintering ground of my herders for the past twenty years has been from the Caché a la Poudre on the south to Fort Fetterman on the north, embracing all the country along the eastern base of the Black Hills.' It was of this country that Mr. Seth E. Ward spoke, when he says: 'I am satisfied that no country in the same latitude, or even far south of it, is comparable to it as a grazing and stock-raising country. Cattle and stock generally are healthy, and require no feeding the year round, the rich 'bunch' and 'gramma' grasses of the plains and mountains keeping them, ordinarily, fat enough for beef during the entire winter,' "All this region east of the Black Hills is at an elevation less than five thousand feet. The climate, as reported from Fort Laramie for a period of twenty years, is 50° Fahrenheit. The mean temperature for the spring months is 47°, for the summer months 72°, for autumn 60°, for winter 31°. The annual rain-fall is about eighteen inches--distributed as follows: Spring, 8.69 inches; summer, 5.70 inches; autumn, 3.69 inches. The snow fall is eighteen inches. "There is in the North Platte Basin, east of the Black Hills divide, at least eight million acres of pasturage, with the finest and most lasting streams, and good shelter in the bluffs and canyons. As I have said before, we can only judge of the extent and resources of such a single region by comparison. Ohio has six million sheep, yielding eighteen million pounds of wool, bringing herd farmers an aggregate of four and one-half million dollars. This eight million acres of pasture would at least feed eight million sheep, yielding twenty-four million pounds of wool, and, at the same price as Ohio wool, six million dollars. Now, this money, instead of going to build up ranches, stock-farms, store-houses, woolen mills, and all the components of a great and thrifty settlement, is sent by our wool-growers and woollen manufacturers to Buenos Ayres, to Africa, and Australia, to enrich other people and other lands, while our wool-growing resources remain undeveloped.