There will be this great difference between farming and stock-keeping—that is, between the proprietors of arable land in the old States, and the flock and herd masters of the plains—that it is impossible to farm on a large scale; it has, with exceptions hardly worth noticing, been so throughout the Union, a farmer seldom getting beyond what he can manage with his own hands and the assistance of his family; but here just the reverse will be the only thing possible. It will be here as it has been in Australia: a man cannot keep a few head of cattle, or a few hundred sheep. To make it pay, indeed, to keep his animals alive, he must have a large tract of land, and do the thing on a large scale. We hear of paddocks in Australia thirty miles square. I suppose on the plains a third of this size will be a sufficiently large run, and a much more profitable one. As the tide of population has now reached the plains on their eastern side, and in some degree on the western and northern sides also, and as many have already got a footing upon them, I suppose, judging from the rapidity with which everything that pays is carried out in America, that in a few years this enormous district, twice as large as France, will be occupied, and by a class of men such as the Union does not now possess. They will be very numerous and very wealthy—quite the wealthiest class in the Union; and even if there is to be no resurrection for the South, which it is impossible to believe, they will compensate, speaking from the wealth-of-nations point of view, for its loss. I have seen some of the pioneers of the class, and, prophesying of those who are to follow, from the way in which the influences of the Plain have shaped those who have already come, I would say that they will be characterised by hardihood, generosity, and manliness. They will occupy with their flocks and herds a great part of Texas on the south, and of Nebraska on the north, with the whole of Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. This region will, like Australia and the districts of the La Plata, export enormous quantities of wool, tallow, and hides. But they will have a mighty advantage over those two great stock-keeping regions, that they will not be themselves the only consumers of their beef and mutton, but will have customers for as much as they can produce, in the inhabitants of a rich and populous continent, of which they will be the centre. In this way is some new source of wealth, and always on the grandest scale, ever being developed in the United States. CHAPTER XVII. THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS—GOLDEN CITY—GOLDEN GATES—MINING TOWNS—NEIGHBOURING MOUNTAINS STRIPPED OF EVERY TREE—WHAT GROWS ON THE MOUNTAINS—AMERICAN HORSES—ROADS AND BRIDGES THEY HAVE TO PASS—HOW, SIX-IN-HAND, WE WENT DOWN A HILL SIDE IN THE MOUNTAINS—A NICE DISTINCTION AS TO ACCIDENTS ON THIS HILL—CLIMATE-WIND-STORMS—BIRDS—DOGS. [Sidenote: _The Rocky Mountains._]