"
Now the trail of the great cattle drives--the Long Trail-was a
thing of tremendous importance of itself and it is still full of
interest. As it may not easily be possible for the author to
better a description of it that was written some twenty years
ago, that description is here again set down.*
* "The Story of the Cowboy," by E. Hough. Appleton. 1897.
Reprinted by permission.
The braiding of a hundred minor pathways, the Long Trail lay like
a vast rope connecting the cattle country of the South with that
of the North. Lying loose or coiling, it ran for more than two
thousand miles along the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains,
sometimes close in at their feet, again hundreds of miles away
across the hard tablelands or the well-flowered prairies. It
traversed in a fair line the vast land of Texas, curled over the
Indian Nations, over Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, and
Montana, and bent in wide overlapping circles as far west as Utah
and Nevada; as far east as Missouri, Iowa, even Illinois; and as
far north as the British possessions. Even today you may trace
plainly its former course, from its faint beginnings in the lazy
land of Mexico, the Ararat of the cattle-range.
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