128 MULES AND MULE BREEDING. 



lonp^ and on how little he seems to live and even thrive. He is 

 less liable to sore backs and galls than any other animal, the 

 donkey excepted. He is a fast walker, and will keep up three 

 miles an hour on average ground, and on good I have known 

 him to do three and a half. Even on a bad road, over rocks 

 and hills, he will do two and a half miles ; but of course heavy 

 sand is very trying to him, as it is for all animals except the 

 camel. He is accused of being obstinate and ill-tempered, but 

 this — if it is the case — arises almost wholly from ill-treatment 

 during juvenility, as well as from the woeful ignorance of the 

 animal's ways that generally prevails among Britishers. The 

 mule is naturally docile and patient in the hands of those who 

 understand him and who treat him kindly, and he will show 

 them as much affection nearly as a horse. He strongly objects 

 to be hit over the head and kicked violently in the ribs or 

 stomach, as I have frequently caught " Tommy Atkin^ " doing, 

 and naturally enough this brutal treatment by no means 

 improves his temper or his manners, so he returns it by biting, 

 kicking, and becoming generally refractory. It is generally 

 supposed that they live from fifteen to twenty years, though 

 some live to thirty, and a few beyond that age. When I WdS 

 in India fifteen years ago there were mules belonging to the 

 Commissariat who were said to have been twenty-two years in 

 the service, and were still working. 



**The Indian pack mule, or I should say the pack mule 

 used in India, ranging between 12 and 13 hands, is by far 

 the best I have seen. I dislike taller mules for pack work. 

 The shorter ones are handier and much easier to load, much 

 more so when they are fresh and obstreperous, as at the 

 beginning of a march or after a rest. In the Egyptian Expedi- 

 tion of 1882 I worked with four hundred Sicilian mules, and 

 splendid animals they were too, but, on the whole, they were in 

 my opinion a trifle too tall for pack work." 



Another very practical authority on military transport. 

 Captain F. D. Lugard^ in his work on our East African 

 Empire,, writes as follows : 



