CHAPTER II

FTER leaving the West in 1874, I returned via Toronto to New York and there had the good luck to

AT

meet the Hon. George Brown, principal owner of the Globe, a newspaper known far and wide over the Dominion of Canada. Brown, who was a Scotchman by birth, played a great part in his adopted country. He was a marvelous man, sanguine, patriotic, indomitable, farseeing politically, adored by his followers, hated by his opponents. When I met him he had long passed the meridian of life, but he still retained all the fire and energy of youth. He owned the beautiful Bow Park farm near Brantford, Ontario. He was an enthusiastic agriculturist. In this line he thought he had a great mission in life. He had fought and won the great battle of the confederation of the Canadian provinces, and as the crowning glory of his life he took up the improvement of the live stock of Ontario especially, and all of Canada generally. The Shorthorn was the keystone of the arch he proposed to build, and unfortunately he turned his attention. to the Bates tribe, then declining through the false god of pedigree leading breeders astray. He invited me to spend a few days on the farm; pleasant hours they were. He had a lot of good cattle of mixed pedigrees that would sell today [1916] at fancy prices. But they went slowly over forty years ago.

Less than two years after my visit he came to Scotland, and through the influence of the Nelsons, Thomas and William, the great Edinburgh publishers who were his brothersin-law, he floated a company, raising a considerable sum of money which was to be spent in buying the best that was to be had in Great Britain in the line of Shorthorn cattle, Clydesdale horses, various breeds of sheep and Berkshire hogs. The cautious Scots were carried away by Brown's enthusiasm. He had a magnetic influence, with a strong

face and an overpowering presence. Gifted with a finely modulated voice, he was one of the men whose sayings you should sleep over and then think some more about them. Remembering my visit to his place, he came out to the Borderland incidentally to see the methods of farming there, but in reality to interest my father in his scheme. The result was we took a small interest in the proposed company, and I was engaged to purchase the Clydesdales and the sheep, and it was also my business to assist in the shipping. Everything went off smoothly, except that we were landed with a lot of exceedingly poor animals with fashionable pedigrees. The buying program which was to continue each year, came to a full stop. In 1877 and 1878 the Shorthorn business was in the doldrums on this side of the Atlantic, so there was an ominous silence. Towards the end of the latter year, the shareholders held a meeting. No accounts had reached them, but the high standing of the Nelsons stopped any adverse criticism. They, however, felt the situation keenly.

Mr. Thos. Nelson and Mr. W. J. Menzies, then and for many years afterwards, manager of the Scottish American Investment Co. and other companies, arranged with me to go out and see what was doing, so I landed in Toronto about the middle of January, 1879. To me it was a sort of adventure, but it turned out to be stern reality. The company was laboring in great financial difficulty. There was practically no income. Sales were few and far between, and there was a steady outgo for wages and farm expenses, and then unfortunately Mr. Brown had tried to bolster up a declining market. Speculators in pedigree like Groom in Kentucky and others in Canada, also had come to grief. In the fall of 1878, John Hope, whose memory along with that of Richard Gibson and Simon Beattie, will ever be revered by the fast passing generation of pure bred live stock importers, had been engaged as herd manager. I had met Hope before at a series of ram sales amid the Cotswold hills, and thus renewed an acquaintanceship which grew, intensified and became a lasting friendship. One of the worst blows I ever received was

to get a cablegram in the little town of Kelso, Scotland, telling me of his death.

The winter's day I got to Bow Park marked an era of strenuous times. Mr. Brown took me down from Toronto to the farm, and it seems like yesterday sitting in the little parlor discussing the affairs of the herd which was composed of about 250 head of Shorthorns, a dozen Clydesdales, quite a flock of sheep and some Berkshire hogs. The owner was enthusiastic, although everything was at odds and ends. Hope was cautious and I was in a maze of doubt which intensified as the days went on. The report, which covered an accounting of the past two and a half years, with an inventory, in such times of live stock depression and the falling edifice of Shorthorn values was a difficult one to make. Added to this was a worse outlook. While Mr. Brown was an able editor and a fearless patriot, he was not a practical farmer. He had a great idea and he stuck to it heroically, that the soiling system was the most economical for a country like Ontario where you have long winters. He had constructed immense barns in which his cattle were housed, and there young and old were fed for three hundred and sixtyfive days of the year. There were a lot of beautiful pastures, but so far as the cattle were concerned, they were scarcely touched. In winter the cattle had corn fodder, roots, hay and large amounts of grain; in summer, green rye, clover, green corn fodder, etc. The farm buildings had no drainage. The manure was thrown into great heaps betwixt the buildings and was allowed to stay there for months. Then it was carted direct to the fields. As immense quantities of straw and hay were bought from farmers, principally renters, there was imported to the farms annually tons and tons of fox-tail, which reproduced itself in a generous way.

In those days the Bates Shorthorns from in-breeding were beginning to show signs of tuberculosis. The British breeders had been careful to weed out any cattle that by ancestry or other signs showed symptoms of the disease. The soiling system, the want of proper drainage, helped this disease

along, and the graveyard at Bow Park was full of valuable cattle who could not withstand such treatment. On a fine old English meadow for nine months of the year and a daily run on it for the balance, they would likely have survived. What added to the difficulties materially was the presence of ergot in the rye and corn fodder, and there were a great many abortions. Nature revolted against the conditions. There were, however, a great many fine cattle on the farm with strong constitutions, and exceedingly well bred, especially some of the Oxford and Wild Eyes tribes and lesser lights that had fine Bates tops in their pedigrees. At the head of the herd the 4th Duke of Clarence was much in evidence. It was my business to take this rather painful story back to the Scotch shareholders, and after a good many rather acrimonious conferences, I was employed as manager of the company and returned to Canada the first days of August. I left the easy going, pleasant life of a Scotch farmer to be thrown into this maelstrom of work and anxiety.

Looking back it is like a nightmare, but youth surmounts obstacles, soon forgets the disagreeable worries of life and comforts himself with the thought that achievement leads on to advancement. Brown was more or less hostile. He was worried financially. During the latter part of the year we had two fires which swept away most of our buildings, and then, as if this was not agony enough, he was shot by a worthless employee the following March. It was only a slight wound, but blood poisoning set in, and this great, wholesouled man, who had filled many public offices from Premier downwards, passed away. While a failure as a farmer, it would be hard to estimate what George Brown did for Canada. As the years pass away and his work and personality grow gradually into history, he will ever in my judgment hold a high place in the annals of the Dominion. He saw ahead of his time, peered into the misty future, dreamt of the days that were coming, when the vote of the lower provinces should be swallowed up by the wondrous growth of the West. He was an empire builder in his way,

but financially he did not reap where he sowed, as Strathcona, Mount Stephen and the peerless Hill have done. And though Bow Park was a failure, it was an effort in the right direction; it helped to blaze the way and was an uplift for Canadian breeders of pure-bred stock, and indirectly helped his adopted country.

My readers will naturally ask what this story has to do with the range. The answer is that it laid the foundation for entering upon that business. In the summer of 1879 Conrad Kohrs, then of Deer Lodge, Mont. (of whom more hereafter), spent a few days at Bow Park and bought some stock. Hope was immensely struck with his strong personality, and often referred to it. There was a glamour about his talk as he opened up the vein of his vast experience. In the autumn of 1879, after a very successful showing season at the fairs in the States and Canada, we held a sale at Dexter Park, Chicago, and as it went off very well, we held another about the middle of April, 1880. Around the ring were several rangemen, and they helped Col. Judy, who wielded the hammer. The party who stands out distinctly in my recollection was Mr. Lee of the old firm of Lee & Reynolds, post traders, ranchmen, etc., at Fort Supply, Indian Territory. Before and after the sale I had several talks with him, and he made a distinct influence on my mind by his intelligent description of his work in the West. I do not recollect ever meeting him. except on that occasion, although I ran across Mr. Reynolds frequently, who was latterly a resident of Denver, Colo., and stood high till his death in that community. So as a brooklet finds its way to a mother stream and eventually rolls along with the increasing volume of water, I gradually drifted into this range business, treading many a tortuous path from then till now. At the old Exposition building on the Lake Front in Chicago in 1882, '83 and '84, we were showing Clarence Kirklevington, Lady Aberdeen, and various other fat cattle, and in those years and at previous shows, I met many rangemen and absorbed much of their glamour and optimism.