MULE RAISING. 



183 



traversed with very bad roads — rough, rocky, and muddy — where these animals 

 are found to be better adapted to the circumstances than horses. In some of 

 the mountainous portions of Pennsylvania they are used in the log- wagons, and 

 it is truly marvellous to see them tugging at their loads, drawing the wains 

 around huge rocks, logs, and stumps, and through rapid ton-ents, and among 

 thickets of tangled underbrush that woukl appal a team of horses, and where 

 these latter animals would be entirely worthless. It is true the teams employed 

 n such situations are of superior quality, and are much larger and heavier than 

 common mules ; but their powers of endurance and their determined pluck and 

 perseverance in overcoming difficulties make them invaluable in this kind of 

 service. Then, again, their great intelligence adds to their value in the wild 

 roads they have to traverse, and enables their driver to manage them without a 

 line, but simply by the word of command, to which they rapidly accustom them- 

 selves, especially when rendered emphatic by the sharp crack of the resounding 

 whip. In the army service mules have been very extensively employed, and 

 increasingly so within a few years. The teams consist of four and six animals, 

 which are found to draw as much as horses, to be more easily maintained, and 

 to endure more hardships. It is a common saying that " a mule never dies," 

 but this has not been verified in the service. Upon the farm they are very 

 much liked by those who employ them, and they are peculiarly adapted to 

 much of the labor to be performed. In deep ploughing, in heavy soils, most 

 mules might be considered too light for this kind of labor, which is supposed to 

 require more weight of carcass to be thrown against the collar in the steady and 

 continuous draught requisite to carry the large turning plough through such a 

 soil ; but with a lighter furrow, on loose, sandy, and gravelly soils, mules are 

 found to make an excellent team, their quick step and their peculiar configura- 

 tion making them track all their feet in nearly the same line, which with the small 

 size of their hoofs adapt them most happily for the cultivation of what are termed 

 hoed crops. In this work the intelligence of the mule keeps him from treading 

 upon the young plants, and his close walking enables us to run a suitable cul- 

 tivator between rows that are very close together in such crops as carrots, tur- 

 nips, and other vegetables that constitute the majority of our hoed crops. So, 

 also, in the garden, the mule becomes a most valuable assistant ; and, indeed, 

 there are a thousand places which he can fill better, or at least as well, as the 

 more noble animal which is usually assigned to such services. Mules have long 

 been the favorite draught animals of the southern plantations ; and, with many 

 persons, the mule and the negro are intimately connected by association, under 

 the impression that the obstinacy and hardiness and endurance of the one, were 

 naturally adapted and related to the low degree of intelligence and brutality of 

 the other. Hence, also, a most mistaken estimate of the intelligence and value 

 of the mule. . Eor while we may with great propriety claim that the mule has 

 wonderful powers of endurance that enable him to bear unnumbered cruelties 

 which are heaped upon him, and that, therefore, he is better adapted to suffer 

 from contact with an ignorant race, degraded by slavery and its attendant de- 

 pressing and demoralizing influences, still, we must be allowed to assert on 

 his behalf that he is a most intelligent, afi:ectionate, and excellent creature, and 

 that it is his powers of endurance, as well as his adaptation to a warm climate, 

 that have caused him to be so generally adopted in the south, where long expe- 

 rience has shown his superiority to the horse for the fatigues and neglects to 

 which he is liable to be subjected at the hands of the careless and brutalized 

 slave. 



The ass is very rarely used in this country for any purpose except for cross- 

 breeding with the mare in the production of mules. In other parts of the world, 

 however, these animals are numerous, and are considered useful, being well 

 adapted to light work, and su.ited, by their cheapness, in the first outlay, and 

 ui their subsistence, to the wants of the poor, and also because, from their 



