tory to be put beside the attempt to drive eight hundred wild Spanish cattle a distance of a thousand miles across mountains and over rivers. Sleep was rare where the mosquitoes were thick, and the cattle were impelled to "break like so many evil spirits and scatter to the four winds."[1] When the task was completed and over six hundred cattle were finally driven into the valley, it was a time of great rejoicing. All traces of those Spanish cattle have now disappeared from the herds of Oregon, but the time was when the meadows were dotted over with their picturesque forms "as mild looking as gazelles when at rest, but as terrible as an army with banners when alarmed."
The cattle that supplanted the Spanish herds, however, came across the plains with the emigrants. It was an undertaking of the greatest difficulty to drive them two thousand miles through country where pasturage was scanty in places and rivers and mountains were numerous. The task which had been pronounced impossible was accomplished, however, and in 1843 over one thousand cattle were brought to the valley.[2] Superior to the Spanish stock, they displaced them in time. No further lack was felt, and by 1850 the increase was so great that the surplus was shipped to California. The quality was improved from year to year, since selected varieties were brought, and, in many cases, stock of noted breeds. In the records of the early agricultural fairs we read of the Durham and Devon cattle, and the Cotswold, Oxfordshire, Southdown, and Merino sheep as particular attractions of the exhibition.[3] With the introduction of cattle and sheep, not only were the needs
- ↑ Diary of P. L. Edwards.
- ↑ Jesse Applegate's "Day With the Cow Column of 1843."
- ↑ Pamphlet report of Agricultural Society of Oregon, 1861.
