The Unvarnished West: Ranching as I found It . By J. M. Pollock . London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent &Co., n. d. [1907?] p. 253. 8vo.

The author is an Englishman. In the early eighties he went to Wisconsin and spent a year as a hired hand on a farm. Then for six or eight years he lived in the Concho country northwest of San Angelo, Texas, and the volume he says is mainly “a record of experiences which fell to my lot while ranching?” The merit of the volume consists in the picture it preserves of the life on a cattle ranch in that section of Texas. Some of the topics are the trackless plains, “free-grass” troubles, droughts and windmills, prairie fires; game and hunting, skunks and rattlesnakes, coyotes; the cattle, the round-ups, cattle drives, northers and stampedes; the cow boy and his pony, horse trading, cooking and plain fare, the hard bed and unwelcome bedfellows, sunshine and shadows of the range. The illustrations, while perhaps reproduced from photographs of more recent date than the events narrated, are judiciously selected and well reproduced. The narrative is plain and straightforward and the views expressed indicate an understanding of and sympathy with the life described.

W .

How to cite:
"The Unvarnished West: Ranching as I found It", Volume 015, Number 1, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Page 89. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v015/n1/review_22.html
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