The Opelousas courier., 1892-08-06
LIFE In THE NEW STATES,
FOUR ANNUAL INvASIONS OF
THE NORTHWEST.
Sheen-Barbers From California and
Cattle Herders From Texas-Hop-
Pickers and Wheat arvesters.

Pickers and WEleat-Harvesfers.
TD ECAUsE it is impossible to pic--
* ture the NOVELETTE, an Eastern
reader-of life in the North
6 west, and because it neverthe.
less must be suggested, let me tell only
of four peculiar visitations that the new
States experience-of four invaslons
which take place there every year. In
May there come into the stock ranges of
Montana shearers by the hundreds, in
bands Of ten or twenty, each led by a
captain, VINO finds employment and
makes contracts for the rest. These
sheep-barbers are mainly Calfornians end
New-Yorkers, and the California men
are said to be the more skilful workers.
TO a layman, all seem marvellouslTdex-
ferrous, and at ten cents a head, T9any
are able to earn S. to So a day. A9They
lose many days in travel, however,, and
may not average more than S. on that
account. Their season begins in Cali
fornia in February, and they work
through Oregon, Washington, aud Mon
tana, to return to a second shearing on
the Pacific coast in August. Some come
mounted and some afoot, and some are
shiftless and dissipated, but many are
saving. and ambitious to earn herds of
their own.
They come upon the Montanan hills
ahead of another and far stranger pro-
cession-that of the cattle that are being
driven across the country from Texas.
This is a string of herds of Texas two
year olds coming north at middle age to
spend the remaining half of their lives
fattening on the Montana bunch grass,
and then to end their careers in Chicago.
The bands are called ''trails," and follow
one another about a day apart. With
each trail ride the hardy and devil-may-
care cowboys, led by a foreman, and tol.
lowed by a horse wrangler in charge OF
the relays of broncos. A cook, with a
four horse wagon load of provisions,
brings up each rear. Only a few miles
are covered in a day, ara the journey
consumes many weeks. THESE are en-
liveued by storms, by panlcs among the
cattle, by quarrels with settlers on guard
at the streams and on their lands, by
meals misfed and nights spent amid mud
and ram. That is as queer and picturesque
a procession as one can easily imagine.
Then there is the early autumn hop
picking in the luxuriant fields of the
Pacific coast in Washington. Down
Puget Sound and along the rivers come
the industrious canoe Indians of that
region in their motley garb, and bent on
making enough money in the hop-telds
, to see them through the rainy and idle
winter. They are not like the Indians
of story and of song but are a squat
figured people, whose chests and arms
are over-deyeloped by exercise in the
canoes, which take the place of the In
dian ponies of the plains, as their rivers
are substituted for the blazed or foot
worn trails of the East. To the hop
| fields they come in their dug-outs iron
as tar north as British Columbia anc
t Alaska. When all have made tint
] tourney their canoes fret the strand, ano
/ the smoke of their camp fire touches tht
i air with blue. Women and children &C
t company the men, all alike illuminating
' the green background of the hop-feld
} with their gay blankets and callcoes
themselves lending still other touches o
4 color by means of their leather skins ant
let hair. They leave a trail of silver be
hind them when they depart, but III
3 hops they have picked represent stlI
:, more of gold-a million last year; tw
millions the year before.
Again. a fourth set of invaders ap
! pears; this time in Dakota. These ar
;. not picturesque. They come not j
:, boats or astride horses, but struggling
( skulking along the highways, as the d.
0 moralized peasantry made their way
e Paris during the French revotutioI
These are the wheat ~haryesters, who TO
i low the golden grain all the way up fro
= Texas, finding themselves in time +
each more and more northerly State, u
l. till in late autumn, they reach the Rs
River Valley, and at last end their stranE
b pilgrimage in Manitoba. The hands al
skill they bring to the dense wEeat-tel
i'll of Eastern North Dakota are most We
come there, and these harvest folk mig
Z easily occupy q high niche IN sentime
tai and poetic literature, yet they don
AS a rule, they are not at all the sort
folk that the ladies of the wheat Ian
invite to their tea parties and sewi
y bees. On the contrary, far too many
20 them are vagabonds and fond of drin
= In the Red River country the harvest,
from the South are joined by lumb
Az men from Wisconsin and Minnesot
who find that great natural granaly a Fl
ls field for turning honest pennies
y lighter work than telling forests
Harper's Magazine.
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