Thus they turn the grass into
beef, and the beef can be easily transported. In fact, it almost
transports itself."
"How do you mean?" asked Marco.
"Why, the oxen and cows, when they are fat and ready for market, walk
off in droves to Boston, to be killed. They don't kill them where they
are raised, for then they would have to haul away the beef in wagons
or sleighs, but make the animals walk to market themselves, and kill
them there. But the farmers don't generally take their own cattle to
market. Men go about the country, and call upon the farmers, and buy
their cattle, and thus collect great droves. These men are called
drovers. In traveling in this part of the country, late in the fall,
you would see great droves of cattle and sheep, passing along the
road, all going to Boston, or rather Brighton."
"Where is Brighton?" asked Marco.
"It is a town very near Boston, where the great cattle market is held.
The Boston dealers come out to Brighton, and buy the cattle, and have
them slaughtered, and the beef packed and sent away all over the
world. Thus the farmers turn the grass into beef, and in that shape it
can be transported and sold."
"And what else?" asked Marco.
"Why, they raise a great many horses in Vermont," replied Forester.
"These horses live upon grass, eating it as it grows in the pastures
and on the mountains, in the summer, and being fed upon hay in the
barn in the winter. These horses, when they are four or five years
old, are sent away to market to be sold. They can be transported very
easily. A man will ride one, and lead four or five by his side. They
will be worth perhaps seventy-five dollars apiece; so that one man
will easily take along with him, three or four hundred dollars' worth
of the produce of the farm, in the shape of horses; whereas the hay
which had been consumed on the farm to make these horses, it would
have taken forty yoke of oxen to move."
"Forty yoke!" repeated Marco.
"I don't mean to be exact," said Forester. "I mean it would take a
great many. So that, by feeding his hay out to horses, the farmer
gets his produce into a better state to be transported to market. The
Vermont horses go all over the land. Thus you see that the farmers
in the grass country have to turn the vegetable products which they
raise, into animal products, before they can get them to market; and
as the rearing of animals is a work which requires a great deal of
attention, care, patience, and skill, the cultivators must be men of a
higher class than those which are employed in raising cotton, or even
than those who raise grain.
