thousands of are driven up from and turned loose on the and are not again till they are sent east at three or four years old these pure the old spanish breed weigh from to pounds and the crossed cattle from to pounds the cattle king of the state is mr of south who owns nine with runs of acres and cattle he is improving his herd rapidly by means of imported stock and indeed the opening of the dead meat trade with this country is giving a great to the improvement of the breed of cattle among all the larger and richer stock owners for this enormous herd men are employed in summer about in winter and horses in the rare case of a severe and protracted snow storm the cattle get a little hay owners of and head of cattle are quite common in sheep are now raised in the state to the extent of half a million and a between the sheep men and the cattle men sheep raising is said to be a very profitable x the rocky mountains business but its risks and losses are greater owing to storms while the for labour dipping materials etc is considerably larger and owing to the comparative inability of sheep to scratch away the snow from the grass hay has to be provided to meet the emergency of very severe snow storms the flocks are made up mostly of pure and but though some flocks which have been carefully for some years show considerable merit the average sheep is a ragged beast mutton four and five years old is sold when there is any demand for it but except at s in i never saw mutton on any table public or private and wool is the great source of profit the old being allowed to die off the best flocks yield an average of seven pounds of wool and the worst two and a half pounds the season which begins in early june lasts about six weeks get six and a half cents a head for inferior sheep and seven and a half for the better quality and a good hand from sixty to eighty in a day it is not likely that sheep raising will attain anything of the which cattle raising is likely to assume the scare is not of much account in the country of the the farmers seem much more depressed by the magnitude and of the wliich finds their fields in the morning as the garden of a lady s x and leaves them at night a desolate wilderness it was so odd and novel to have a beautiful bedroom hot water and other luxuries the snow began to fall in good earnest at six in the evening and all night accompanied by intense frost so that in the morning there were eight inches of it glittering in the sun miss p gave me a pair of men s to draw on over my boots and i set out tolerably early and broke my own way for two miles then a single had passed making a track for thirty miles otherwise the snow was the sky was absolutely and as i made the long ascent of the divide the mountains by deep came sweeping down to the valley on my right and on my left the foot hills were crowned with coloured fantastic rocks like everything was buried under a glittering of snow the of the streams was bound by of ice so branches in the still air no birds sang ko one passed or met me there were no near or far the only sound was the of the snow under s feet we came to a river over which some logs were laid with some yoimg trees across them put one foot ou tliis then drew it back and put another on then smelt the bridge wore useless she only smelt held back and turned hei x the rocky mountains cunning head and looked at me it was useless to argue the point with so sagacious a beast to the right of the bridge the ice was much broken and we the river there but as it was deep enough to come up to her body and was icy cold to my feet i wondered at her preference afterwards i heard that the bridge was dangerous she is the queen of and is veiy gentle though she has not only wild horse blood but is herself the wild horse she is always cheerful and hungry never tired looks at everything and her legs are like rocks her one trick is that when the saddle is put on she herself to a very large size so that if any one not accustomed to her her i soon find the three or four inches too large when i saddle her a gentle slap on her side or any slight start which makes her cease to hold her breath puts it all right she is quite a companion and bathing her back her nostrils and seeing her fed after my day s ride is always my first care at last i reached a log cabin where i got a feed for us both and further directions the rest of the day s ride was awful enough the snow was thirteen inches deep and grew deeper as i ascended in silence and loneliness but just as the sim sank behind a snowy peak i reached the top of the divide feet above the sea level there in lay a frozen lake among the pines a lady s life x the trail was obscure the was not settled the was � below my feet had lost all sensation and one of them was frozen to the wooden i found that owing to the depth of the snow i had only ridden fifteen miles in eight and a half hours and must look about for a place 