The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1884-03-29
The Mule.


F. G., Skinner IN Tarf, Field and Farm.
1t is only among some of the Latin races,
as in Spain and Portugal and in the East,
that the mule and his sire, the ass, are ap-
preciated at their true value With the
Germanic descent and more particularly
the Anglo-Saxon, prejudice, as deeply
rooted as it is i'll founded, prevents that
familiar affectionate association with the
ass and the mule which does so much to
develop the finest instincts, and humanize,
as it were, the horse and the dog. With
us the horse is bred for pleasure as well as
for profit. Three is some sentiment in the
thing, and one rarely parts with fine colt,
at whatever price, without more or less
regret
There was time, however, few CEN
turies since, when even in England the mule
was the peer of his aristocratic half brother
the horse; when, clad in magnificent hous-
ings, he proudly bore upon his back the
abbots, the bishops, and the princes of the
all-powerful Roman Church, nor would
this have been the case had he not been
deemed by the luxurious and self-indulgent
prelates of that day as far superior to the
horse for the purpose of the saddle.
Even as late as 1880 the mule was held
to be an indispensable part of the appen-
dage of the Bourbon dynasty of France,
and whenever the court of Charles X.
moved from the palace of the Tuileries to
Compiegne or Fontainebleau it was in
coaches drawn at gallop of ten miles an
hour by superb teams Of Spanish mules,
and such mules Near 16 hands high,
match to hair, glossy black in color,
'mealy mouthed, with legs and eyes like
antelopes, and showing in spirit, action and
endurance the generous Barb blood of their
maternal ancestry.
But to see the mule at his best we should
go to the sunny shores of the Mediterra-
nean-to Spain and Portugal. The Ara
bian domination of 800 years on that great
peninsula filled it with horses of Arabian
and Barb blood, and this blood, to which
we attribute the best qualities of the mod
ern racehorse, -paradoxical as it may
seem-the sweet temper, the broad fore
head, the expressive eye, and beautiful ear of
the massive Percheron flows, and freely, too,
in the veins of the Spanish mule, and i'm
parts to him an appearance as superior to
American mules bred for the drudgery of
our Southern plantations as is that of the
kings of turf to the coarsest Conestoga
Whoever has had the good fortune to
have seen the high-strung and highly bred
mules harnessed to the travelling equipages
of the Spanish King dashing through the
Puertadel-Sol at ten-mile gate or have en-
countered the interminable professions of
gay caparisoned mules, bearing the name
of all the saints in the calender, treading
with unerring feet the dangerous defiIes of
the Pyrenees and the Sierra Morena, to the
sound of innumerable tinkling bells, will
cease at once and forever to object to the
mule on the score of his appearance; and
whoever have seen the large, dark eyed
brown, dirty, ragged, but beautiful children
of Andalusia gambolling as fearlessly and
with as much impunity under the heels of
the mules with which they were brought
up as do the children in the tents of the
Arab among the mares will be compelled to
admit that with the same kind treatment
the mule, too, will develop traits as near
akin to humanity as the dog and the horse.
We are inclined to believe that the we'll
bred mules possesses undeveloped qualities
for both quick draught and the saddle, for
which the general public is not inclined to
give credit, and we are convinced from ac-
tual observation that for light, quick
draught over long distances and continuous
from day to day and for saddle gaits, mules
out of thoroughbred mares by the best NAL
tese jacks are fully equal and perhaps supe-
rior to our average light draught and sad
die horses.
We remember pair of mules, bred by
one of the Shelbys, in Kentucky, that
drew a carriage containing five heavy men
forty miles over an ordinary road in five
hours without turning hair or crack of a
whip, and returned the next day with
equal ease and in the same time
In 1886 we saw On Red River, La, 500
paid for saddle mule that could pace at
the rate of ten miles an hour for hours to-.
gether
We have friend in Rappahannock, Va,
Tom Hughes, regular son of Anack in
size, six etfve in his stockings, big in pro-
portion and tipping the beam at over 200
pounds, who for several seasons rode in the
first fight to hound hunting country that
was nearly all mountain on mule that
never made misstep or refused to leap a
fence or wall