like quills upon the fretful porcupine.  One has to be particular about snapping caps in his neighborhood, and give to him careful warning before discharging a carbine to clean it.  His first impulse, when anything occurs to jar upon his delicate nerves, is to cut his wheel-mule loose and retire with the precipitation of a man having an appointment to keep and being behind time.  There is no man who can get as much speed out of a mule as a teamster falling back from the neighborhood of heavy firing.

This nervous tremor was not peculiar to the engineers of our transportation department.  It was noticeable in the gentry who carted the scanty provisions of the Rebels.  One of Wheeler’s cavalrymen told me that the brigade to which he belonged was one evening ordered to move at daybreak.  The night was rainy, and it was thought best to discharge the guns and reload before starting.  Unfortunately, it was neglected to inform the teamsters of this, and at the first discharge they varnished from the scene with such energy that it was over a week before the brigade succeeded in getting them back again.

Why association with the mule should thus demoralize a man, has always been a puzzle to me, for while the mule, as Col.  Ingersoll has remarked, is an animal without pride of ancestry or hope of posterity, he is still not a coward by any means.  It is beyond dispute that a full-grown and active lioness once attacked a mule in the grounds of the Cincinnati Zoological Garden, and was ignominiously beaten, receiving injuries from which she died shortly afterward.

The apparition of a badly-scared teamster urging one of his wheel mules at break-neck speed over the rough ground, yelling for protection against “them Johnnies,” who had appeared on some hilltop in sight of where he was gathering corn, was an almost hourly occurrence.  Of course the squad dispatched to his assistance found nobody.

Still, there were plenty of Rebels in the country, and they hung around our front, exchanging shots with us at long taw, and occasionally treating us to a volley at close range, from some favorable point.  But we had the decided advantage of them at this game.  Our Sharpe’s carbines were much superior in every way to their Enfields.  They would shoot much farther, and a great deal more rapidly, so that the Virginians were not long in discovering that they were losing more than they gained in this useless warfare.

Once they played a sharp practical joke upon us.  Copper River is a deep, exceedingly rapid mountain stream, with a very slippery rocky bottom.  The Rebels blockaded a ford in such a way that it was almost impossible for a horse to keep his feet.  Then they tolled us off in pursuit of a small party to this ford.  When we came to it there was a light line of skirmishers on the opposite bank, who popped away at us industriously.  Our boys formed in line, gave the customary, cheer, and dashed in to