We had twenty miles of such luxuriant mud that we stopped to photograph it. It is only slight exaggeration to say that the ruts came to the camera’s level. Then we forded the Neuces River, a stream woven into early Texan history, and began to climb out of the land of cotton into the grazing country. The herds and herds of sheep and white angora goats we now encountered made a charming landscape but an irritating episode. A large flock of silly sheep rambled halfway to our car, then, frightened, fled in the other direction, turning again with those they met, who also faced and fled, baa-ing; no militia could clear the traffic they disorganized. Each herd we met meant a wasted half hour. Their herders sat their horses in grim patience, with the infinite contempt shepherds get for their charges and for life in general. Out here, “being the goat” takes a new and dignified meaning--for a goat is placed with each hundred sheep to steer the brainless mass, act as leaders in danger, and furnish the one brain of the herd. These pastoral happenings delayed us, until toward night we climbed dark dunes into a clear golden sunset. Through a gate we entered what seemed to be a cattle track through a large ranch, but was in fact the main highway to El Paso. The roads in this part of the country cut through large holdings, and the pestiferous cattle gate begins to bar the road, necessitating stopping, crossing, shutting the gate again, several times a mile. And let me warn the traveling Easterner that not to leave a gate as you find it is in truth a crime against hospitality, for one is often on private property.