There is another difficulty that has been overcome by the wagon-brake.  In stopping to lock wheels on the top of a hill, your train get into disorder.  In most cases, when trains are moving on the road, there is a space of ten or fifteen feet between the wagons.  Each team, then, will naturally close up that space as it comes to the place for halting to lock.  Now, about the time the first teamster gets his wheel locked, the one in the rear of him is dismounting for the same purpose.  This being repeated along the train, it is not difficult to see how the space must increase, and irregularity follow.  The more wagons you have to lock with the drag-chain, the further you get the teams apart.  When you have a large body of wagons moving together, it naturally follows that, with such a halt as this, the teams in the rear must make twenty-five halts, or stops, and starts, for everyone that the head team makes.

When the teamster driving the second team gets ready to lock, the first, or head team, starts up.  This excites the mule of the second to do the same, and so all along the train.  This irritates the teamster, and he is compelled to run up and catch the wheel-mules by the head, to make them stop, so that he can lock his wheels.  In nine cases out of ten he will waste time in punishing his animals for what they do not understand.  He never thinks for a moment that the mule is accustomed to start up when the wagon ahead of him moves, and supposes he is doing his duty.  In many cases, when he had got his wheels locked, he had so excited his mules that they would run down the hill, cripple some of the men, break the wagon, cause a “smash-up” in the train, and perhaps destroy the very rations and clothes on which some poor soldier’s life depended.  We all know what delay and disaster have resulted from the roads being blocked up in this manner.  The brake, thanks to the inventor, offers a remedy for all this.  It also saves the neck and shoulders of every animal in the train; it saves the feet of the wheelers; it saves the harness; it saves the lead and swing mules from being stopped so quick that they cut themselves; and it saves the wheels at least twenty per cent.  Those who have had wagons thrown over precipices, or labored and struggled in mud and water two and three hours at a time, can easily understand how time and trouble could have been saved if the wagon could have been locked in any way after it started over those places.  The best brake by all odds, is that which fastens with a lever chain to the brake-bar.  I do not like those which attach with a rope, and for the reason that the lazy teamster can sit on the saddle-mule and lock and unlock, while, with the chain and lever, he must get off.  In this way he relieves the saddle-mule’s back.

We all know that, in riding mules down steep or long hills, you do much to stiffen them up and wear them out.

CHAPTER VI.  SOMETHING MORE ABOUT BREEDING MULES.