556 HORSE BUYING AND BREEDING IN SOUTH AFRICA. 
or four crops a year. 
It is, for obvious reasons, most important to brand your purchases 
immediately. To enable you to do this satisfactorily and without un¬ 
necessary delay, it is important to' impress on the contractor to have 
as many boys as possible to assist in holding the animals, but you 
should always have one reliable white man to assist your farrier. It 
is pretty hard work branding about a hundred animals at a stretch. 
Each animal requires five different operations, four numbers and the 
broad arrow, and it is a great advantage to your operators to have an 
assistant whom he knows and can rely on, instead of having to trust 
to a casual man. We branded our mules with local numbers (running 
into four figures) on the off side of the neck, and the broad arrow on 
the near. Horses had the broad arrow branded on the near thigh, 
and the number on the near fore foot. 
Mules are funny beggars to brand, but we managed several thousand 
without having to throw one. A few very refractory ones had to be 
tied short up to a post by a stout cord, but the majority stood all right 
with a twitch on and a strong man holding them. We met on our 
travels several very fine specimens of Africanders, burly transport 
riders who understood mules thoroughly and could do almost any¬ 
thing with them, partly by brute force, but more by talking to them, 
and addressing each of their own mules by name. 
The Dutchman accounts for the vagaries of the mule by the fact 
that he is an invention of man and not of the Almighty. I am afraid 
he is an animal that can only be satisfactorily controlled by firmness 
rather than kindness. It is advisable before approaching a strange 
mule either for examination or measurement to have a bridle put on 
him with blinkers on it. 
The horses of South Africa are naturally very docile, and you com¬ 
paratively rarely see a vicious animal or a buck juniper. As an in¬ 
stance of their natural quietness, I give a photograph of two babies 
who had been standing like this for half an hour, with no one at their 
heads, out on the veldt whilst we were having a swim. 
It is lucky that these animals are naturally sweet-tempered because, 
as a rule, on farms they are very badly broken. A nigger boy who 
can stick on a bit is put up on a youngster and hoorooshes away with 
a sharp bit in his mouth and a f sjambok ’ in his hand, frightening 
the poor little horse out of his life. You hardly ever see a bridoon out 
here; either a sharp single curb, or a Pelham, is almost always used, 
and for dirty old bits and disreputable leather work South Africa 
takes some beating. 
The pace of the country, an acquired one of course, is the tripple. 
It is claimed that a horse which can tripple well, (and a well trained 
trippler fetches a bit of money out here) will cover a long distance with 
the minimum amount of fatigue to himself and his rider, though I 
fancy it is the latter that is chiefly considered. Personally I did not 
like the pace; perhaps I was never on a really high class trippler or 
perhaps it was that I was not used to it. It is something like an amble, 
only not so comfortable, as you feel the working of the animal’s 
