MULES. 189 



account of their size and spirit, wherever they could 

 be found, one only had any vicious propensities, and 

 those might have been subdued by proper management 

 when young. I have always found them truer pullers 

 and quicker travellers with a load, than horses. Their 

 vision and hearing is much more accurate. I have 

 used them in my family carriage, in a gig, and under 

 the saddle: and have never known one to start or run 

 from any object or noise : a fault in the horse that 

 continually causes the maiming and death of numbers 

 of human beings. The mule is more steady in his 

 draught and less likely to waste his strength than the 

 horse: hence more suitable to work with oxen; and as 

 he walks faster, will habituate them to a quicker gait. — 

 But for none of the purposes of agriculture does his 

 superiority appear more conspicuous than plouglnng 

 among crops, his feet being smaller and follow each 

 other so much more in a line, that he seldom treads 

 down the ridges or crops. The facility of instructing 

 him to obey implicitly the voice of his driver or the 

 ploughman, is astonishing. The best ploughed tillage 

 land 1 ever saw, I have had performed by two mules 

 tandem, without lines or driver. 



There is one plausible objection often urged against 

 the mule, that " on deep soils and deep roads, his feet 

 being so much smaller than those of the horse, sink 

 farther in ; but it should be considered that he can 

 extricate them with as much greater facility. 



Few can be ignorant of the capacity of the mule to 

 endure labour in a temperature of heat that would be 

 destructive to the horse, who have any knowledge of 

 the preference for him merely on that account, in the 

 VV est Indies, and in the Southern States. 



It is full time to bring our comparison to a close, 

 which I shall do by assuming the position, that the 



