It would be a saving of thousands of dollars to the Government, if, in purchasing mules, it could get them all halter and bridle-broken.  Stablemen, in the employ of the Government, will not take the trouble to halter and bridle-break them properly; and I have seen hundreds of mules, in the City of Washington, totally ruined by tying them up behind wagons while young, and literally dragging them through the streets.  These mules had never, perhaps, had a halter on before.  I have seen them, while tied in this manner, jump back, throw themselves down, and be dragged on the ground until they were nearly dead.  And what is worse, the teamster invariably seeks to remedy this by beating them.  In most cases, the teamster would see them dragged to death before he would give them a helping hand.  If he knew how to apply a proper remedy, very likely he would not give himself the trouble to apply it.  I have never been able to find out how this pernicious habit of tying mules behind wagons originated; but the sooner an order is issued putting a stop to it, the better, for it is nothing less than a costly torture.  The mule, more than any other animal, wants to see where he is going.  He cannot do this at the tail of an army wagon, though it is an excellent plan for him to get his head bruised or his brains knocked out.

Some persons charge it as an habitual vice with the mule to pull back.  I have seen horses contract that vice, and continue it until they killed themselves.  But, in all my experience with the mule, I never saw one in which it was a settled vice.  During the time I had charge of the receiving and issuing of horses to the army, I had a great many horses injured seriously by this vice of pulling back.  Some of these horses became so badly injured in the spine that I had to send them to the hospital, then under the charge of Dr. L.H.  Braley.  Some were so badly injured that they died in fits; others were cured.  Even when the mule gets his neck sore, he will endure it like the ox, and instead of pulling back, as the horse will, he will come right up for the purpose of easing it.  They do not, as some suppose, do this because of their sore, but because they are not sensitive like the horse.

Packing Mules.—­In looking over a copy of Mason’s Farrier, or Stud Book, by Mr. Skinner, I find it stated that a mule is capable of packing six or eight hundred pounds.  Mr. Skinner has evidently never packed mules, or he would not have made so erroneous a statement.  I have been in all our Northern and Western Territories, in Old and New Mexico, where nearly all the business is done by pack animals, mules, and asses; and I have also been among the tribes of Indians bordering on the Mexican States, where they have to a great extent adopted the Spanish method of packing, and yet I never saw an instance when a mule could be packed six or eight hundred pounds.  Indeed, the people in these countries would ridicule such an assertion.  And here I purpose to give the result of my own experience in packing, together with that of several others who have long followed the business.