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Rh dry country, it has vast tracts covered with highly nutritious grasses, which are eminently fitted for the pasturage of horses, cattle, and sheep; and which at the present time, as they have been for many years past, are abundantly stocked with these animals. In fact, the whole so-called "cattle-range business" had its origin, not in the United States, but in this section of Mexico, whence the current phrases, the manners, customs, and the methods of doing business have been derived and copied all over the United States, wherever live-stock is raised, as it is termed, "on the range." Here also was the original home and origin of the cow-boy; and here, to-day, "herding" constitutes the basis of nearly all business, and the source of nearly all subsistence, profits, and wealth of the inhabitants. Everybody here, as has been remarked, "is more or less of a cow-boy—the lawyer, the doctor, the shoemaker, the tailor, the merchant, and even the editor"; for it is "the man with the spurs and the lariat that gives character to this whole region."

On the "tierras calientes" or comparatively narrow belt of coast-lands, on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides of Mexico, there is abundance of wood and water, cheap and fertile land, and most luxuriant vegetation, but the climate is such that the white races will never live there in the capacity of laborers. When one hears, therefore, of