106 AN OBLIGING STRANGER. 



selves to you, and whose appearance is often in their favour. 

 Such a man, whom I will call " the Colonel/' which was the 

 name he generally went by, was most anxious tf to save me all 

 trouble/' so after thanking him profusely I commissioned him 

 to buy me a good span of mules, and four horses suited to the 

 West, the result being as follows : There were a span of fine- 

 looking mules of which one was lame and had been so for 

 months, one horse which had been sold because he was a con- 

 firmed bolter, another because he ate up his bridle, reins, or 

 anything else with which he might be fastened, and a third 

 because he was touched in the wind, the fourth was a " race- 

 mare/' who could do a mile in some wonderfully short time, 

 and of whom more hereafter. 



Fortunately I got my men myself, taking them on the 

 recommendation of an old freighter, and very good they both 

 were Ivor going as cook and Ben as driver, the only necessary 

 qualification for the former berth being the knowledge of how 

 to make a fire and to put on water to boil, all the rest being 

 supposed to come. 



It took ten days to get everything together, and about the 

 beginning of July we started, our outfit being carried in a light 

 waggon, in which we had nearly twenty-five hundredweight, 



much too great a load over such roads. M and I had two 



horses each, riding one and leading the other, and the two men 

 travelled on the box of the waggon. 



I must not forget to say that I had on this trip a number of 

 patent compendiums, than which nothing could have worked 

 better or seemed more convenient in the shops, but all of 

 which we gradually threw away, as they became dinted and no 

 longer fitted one inside another. 



