The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1900-02-04
BARBED WIRE IN THE WEST.
What the Introduction of Wire
Fences Has Meant to Man and Reast

fenceS Has Meant to Man and Beast.
In the Century Magazine. for February,
Mr., Z. Hough, author of 1.-THE Story of
the Cowboy" tells of the Introduction
of that "fourfold abomination' which
marked out the path of civilization in the
Far West:
A few years ago a villager down in Hi
nois bent bit of iron about a strand of
fence wire, and noticed that his cattle
avoided it. Out of this idea grew sys-
TEN of fencing which has preserved our
pine forests few decades longer but
which brought to an end many decades
earlier the glorious free days of the open
and unfenced West. The great cattle
ranges, over which roamed one of the most
Independent populations ever seen ca
earth, could never have been fenced by
rails. or stone walls, or boards of pine 1t
was difficult enough for the spider like
genius of advancing civilization to keep
them fenced with the ever-renewCd weo
of the fatal wire against which the vii
men of the early days rebelled SO streuu-
ously. Yet mile by mile. thousands OF
miles after thousands Of miles. the cheap
and easily spun web craw.ed out across
the West and held it hard and firm. You
can meyer uncoil the deadly web neither
can you replace the victim which 1t starn-
gled.
Little more than dozen years ago the
writer was with a party hunting for
buffalo calvse in the upper part of the
Panhandle of Texas, where we knew of a
little herd still remaining Of those grc1
animals even then considered virtually
extinct 1t was a weary and desolate
land where between water-hole and wa
ter-hole lay sixty or seventy miles of alb
solute desert. Not a tree broke the end
less monotony of the plains. The soil
was like flint The sky had for months
been guilless of a drop Of rain. II was
a region so utterly uusuted for the hab'-
tation of mankind that these last few rep
resentatives of a passing race of great
American animals had chosen it as their
final place of refuge thinking that per-
hans there they would never again hear
the sound of riheshot or see again the face
of man.
Yet one morning, as we faced the sun
of anotehr wateress day. we came upon
a line of strong wire fence, coming from
where no man could tell, and running in
one unbroken line to the uttermost limits
Of our vision IL was no delusion, no mir
acle. no wonder of the wild mirage. IL
was an accused fact. 1t had no right
there. on that free land, where even the
wind had swept for ages unfettered by SO
much as a iedl VI Stthi VI sNl a NSlli5 tree,
Az we napveled and muttered al this
thing. we saw, in the red light Of the east,
a mile moving band of great forms which
we knew to be those of the buffalo. They
saw us also, and with the instinct of
generation Of persecution swept away at
once in flight. Across their line lay this
fourfold abomnation, this corded barrier,
tbls new thing, this infamy never before
dreamed of on these free plains. Close
punched. the buffalo struck it with the
FORCE of a heavy locomotive, and crushed
through and over IL as though they passed
en- many straws. All. there was a thing
dramatic, admirable. out there on that far
awav desert! IT was the old West reni-
inc the net Of the ritiarius casting aside
The strands set for lbs Undoing, and stand
inp on unhindered, free! Seeing the beauty
Of This spectacle, our best roper, a cow
nuncher born on the old range, rose IN his
stirrups and took off his hat to cheer the
hnffalo as they numbered on. For twenty
nanels the fence lay fiat, and we role
across IT, Along its inner side was
oath worn inches deep by the feet OF
countless antelope, cut off by this fence
from their ancient way TO some unknown
water-hole. No man of our party felt
clad at this evidence of approaching civil
lization. this fence thrustlng out into the
wild land. Every man was partzan for
the buffalo and the antelope, and exulted
AZ this prostration of their enemy, though
knowing with sorrow how brief must be
their little victory