One who has seen anything of these enormous plains, cannot 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 and climate are very much better, they will support, at a far cheaper rate, a much greater number of millions of sheep and cattle. In the Valley of the Platte, for 500 miles, and down as far as Denver, though the climate is too dry for agricultural purposes, still the herbage is so abundant and nutritious that even in winter, when it is all dried up into the form of natural hay, herds of cattle are turned out to fatten upon it, which they do readily, without any shelter or any help from artificial food. [Sidenote: _The Australia of America._] As you go further south, you get some regions still better adapted to grazing and sheep-farming, and some not so good, till you come to Texas, in which enormous numbers of horned cattle are raised already. That Nature does of herself supply everything 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 sum: if Nature, unaided, supported without fail so many millions of large herbivorous animals, how many more will she support when aided by the care and forethought of man? Convert in your mind these countless herds of buffalo into sheep and oxen, and then multiply the result twenty fold, for that amount may easily be reached, when American flock-masters and herd-masters shall have taken possession of the plains, and parcelled them out into manageable ranches, turning the whole of the surface to account. There are a great many streams, small and great, which carry the drainage of the mountains across these plains to the Mississippi; and in places where there are no streams, water may be obtained by sinking wells. Wherever I went I made enquiries on this subject, and looked myself into the wells; and I found that water was reached in the Valley of the Platte, and on the plains from Shyenne to Denver, at a depth of about thirty feet. Water for the stock might be pumped from such wells by horse-engines or wind-mills.