598 Report upon the Exhibition of Horses at Kilhum. 
few who have tried him for agricultural purposes, without under- 
standing his peculiar habits or studying his character, there is 
too much disposition to pronounce him a stubborn, unintelligent, 
and impracticable brute, which eats as much as his nobler half- 
brother, and does not get through half as much work. A time, 
however, will come — and the sooner the better — when English- 
men will be compelled to acknowledge that, for certain military 
uses, the mule is the most valuable four-footed servitor upon 
which man can lay his hand. And I may notice parenthetically 
that unfeigned astonishment is often expressed by American 
soldiers of experience and intelligence that the IBritish War 
Office has been so long in discovering that the little wars, in 
which this country is perpetually engaged, would be conducted 
with greater promptitude, and at far less cost, if a large mule- 
train were always kept in readiness at home. It will be urged, 
perhaps, that mules in any quantities can always be purchased in 
the United States, in South America, or in Spain and Malta ; 
but precious time is needlessly lost when scanty preparations for 
war are made until it has actually begun ; and, in addition, the 
outlay, by reason of a sudden demand, is vastly increased, to the 
disadvantage of the purchaser. Moreover, it is indispensable 
that teamsters, trained and accustomed, in the slang phrase of 
California, " to exhort the impenitent mule," should be equally 
available with the drudges they are expected to drive ; and expe- 
rience has taught us in Zululand, that the American teamster, 
whether white or black, is for the most part as larcenous and 
unsatisfactory a blackguard as ever crossed the Atlantic. What 
we want is, beyond question, soldier-drivers, trained at Woolwich 
and elsewhere to know and handle the mule ; which, rightly- 
comprehended, is a remarkably docile and intelligent quadruped, 
and one to which his habitual employers soon become accus- 
tomed and attached. 
It must not, however, be forgotten that, except for supply- 
trains and commissariat-waggons, the mule is not available lor 
military purposes. He is altogether unfit to be " hitched " to 
field artillery, because guns of this kind, especially when going 
into action, are apt to get into all sorts of queer places, and to 
be lugged up steep and difficult banks, or across boggy holes 
and quagmires. If once a mule-team gets " stalled," or, as we 
say in England, " bogged," the animals become demoralised, 
and refuse, unlike the generous horse, to make another effort. It 
will be obvious that under these circumstances a field-gun, 
stuck tight within range of the enemy, and with no chance to 
unlimber and open fire on its own account, is worse than use- 
less. When, however, we come to the multitudinous waggons , 
