| THE COMING OF THE EUROPEANS. 273
Spaniards in Mexico and Peru—very likely a
small number at first. They found the region
around them producing plenty of grass, and the
climate mild and summer-like through the whole
year. Of course, they required no care on the
part of man, and began soon to multiply with
great rapidity ; and now, after the lapse of three
hundred years, herds of them cover the prairies
and plains of the middle and southern regions of
America in countless millions, and, of course,
other animals, that before occupied the same
grounds and fed upon the same herbage, have been
displaced by them and have disappeared.
It is somewhat so with the cow. Wild cattle,
originally introduced into the country by coloni-
zing companies from Spain, now throng the South
American plains in such numbers that they are
hunted and slain by hundreds of thousands every
year for the sake of the bides. And still the num-
bers are increasing.
The bovine races of Europe, however, have not
been able to spread in a wild state northwardly
into the prairies of North America, on account
perhaps of the fact that the buffalo, a superior
al of the same kind—superior in respect to
ength and ability to maintain his ground—has
possession already. Nor were they or the horses
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