FROM one kind of bronco we will skip to another. The 

 Indian must have transportation as well as riding ponies, 

 and as the patient ass is the follower of Mohammed, so is 

 the travaux (or traineau) pony to the Indian. It is hard 

 to say which bears the most load according to his capac- 

 ity, the donkey or the pony. On the whole, perhaps, 

 weight for weight, the palm must be awarded to the ass ; 

 but either earns what he gets with fourfold more right 

 than his master. The burdens the ass bears in the Orient 

 break him down to the extent of forgetting how to kick. 

 Fancy driving even an overworked Kentucky mule by the 

 tail, as they do the donkey in many parts of the East, and 

 guiding him by a tweak of that appendage, close to his 

 treacherous heels ! In a later chapter I shall sing paeans 

 to this noblest of the equine race. 



The travaux pony is equally worked out of all idea of 

 bucking. He furnishes the sole means of transportation 

 of the Indian camp, except sometimes a dog hitched to a 

 diminutive traineau, and managed half for sport, half 

 work by a boy ; and, weight for weight, drags on his 

 tepee-poles more than the best mule in Uncle Sam's serv- 

 ice does on an army -wagon. When camp is broken, the 

 squaws strip the tent-poles of their buffalo-skin coverings, 

 and it is these poles which furnish the wheels of the Ind- 

 ian vehicle. Vehicle is, perhaps, an odd term to us who 

 make the word synonymous with rotary progression ; but 

 vehicles on runners are to-day used at all seasons in many 



