228 THE COMMANDER AND HIS MEN. Book II. 
volvers, of the army bore, with a double-barrelled gun, so 
that I had always fourteen shots at command. Mr. Mayer 
and our waggon-master were armed in the same manner. 
The caravan is likewise furnished with a store of 
clothes, shoes, hats, knives, tobacco, and other articles of 
daily want ; the proprietor or conductor generally under- 
taking the task of providing all the articles which the 
party require for their equipment. An account for these 
is opened with each driver and servant, to be repaid out of 
their future wages. The prices are fixed very high, and 
with reason, as losses are unavoidable ; and as during the 
journey a great quantity of these articles is consumed, 
there remains to a man, at the end of it, out of his 
wages (twelve to twenty dollars a month), seldom more 
than the means of making himself merry a few days, 
like the sailor on shore ; after which he is obliged to seek 
fresh service, either returning by the same road or pro- 
ceeding on by another. Thus we find on the prairie-roads, 
and at the stations on their limits, a moving population 
of drivers and muleteers, which we can only compare to 
sailors at sea and in port; and everywhere in travelling in 
these parts — at Independence or Westport on the Mis- 
souri, at Santa Fe or El Paso on the Rio Grande, at 
Chihuahua in Northern Mexico, at San Antonio in Texas, 
at Los Angeles in California, or in the Mormon city on the 
great Salt Lake — the traveller will, from time to time, meet 
again the same fellows, lounging about like idle sailors on 
the landing-place of a harbour. 
The commander of a caravan is the waggon-master : 
the Mexicans entitle him the mayor-domo. The pro- 
prietor, unless he himself takes the command, is to 
the waggon-master (if present on the journey) in the posi- 
tion of a supercargo to the captain of a ship. This was 
