Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1897-06-23
PACK HORSES OF JAPAN.

EnduFnnce.
 1t is pretty well known by this tina that the cavalry of the Japanese army is by far it's weakest division This, pi course, is not uncommon. in tho armies of many countries, simply for the reason that economists cut off the horses in time of peace, and trust to Providence and subsidized carters to make ID the deficiency ill time of war
 The problem is not qnite the same in Japan. Comparatively, if not abso- lutely, there are no horses in Japan, just as there are no sheep In the north one comes across a few biting, like sheep as horses but, taking the country as whole. there is scarcely decent animal that will take saddle.
 What horses, or rather ponies are to be found come from China, which pro- duce very good breed Of freight car- fiers though they have much to be de- sired in point of speed Horse racing exists in Japan Yokohama and Tokio have their courses--as it exists wher- ever two or three Englishmen are gathered together, but it is a species of racing quite unlike anything to be found elsewhere.
 The ponies are imported from Hong Kong or Shanghai by | syndicate, lots are drawn and after certain interval for training, the races take place.
 But to return to the army One can conceive campaign, and especially such one as the Japanese have been doing, being carried on from first to last without cavalry at all, or at any rate, with the merest skeleton of mounted force. This, of course, as far ss fighting or scouting goes. There re. main the all-important questions of artillery and transport
 In neither of these departments are i horses absolutely necessary, provided you have an adequate supply of human labor, and it is just here that Japan scores.
 Very little has been published with regard to the transport arrangements of the force that marched so steadily through Gorea to the gates of China, but it is not difficult to guess what they are. Four years ago there were thirty-three thousand iinriekshaw coolies ill Tolxio alone. Taking the moderate estimate that there were just double this mum ber in the whole empire, it is safe to say that there are quite eighty thousand now, for the kurumaya class Ginrickshaw1 is rapidly increasing one, owing to the simple fact that man who can pnll kuruma is able to earn three times as much as he could at any other manual labor. In fact, the kuruma question is rapidly becoming very vital one in the Japanese indUstrial problem, but the trade is so eIercrowded that the problem will soon solve itself accord ing to the inexorable laws of supply elass-and it is quite 6 recent origin for the lxuruma was only invented quarter of a century ago-was a god- send to Japan in her late struggle.
 To judge from what one hears pri- vately from Japan, jinriclxshaw coolies are now at premium in the capital, and Osaka and Kioto tell me the same tale, The lSurumaya have been am nexed" by the imperial government much in the same way as the entire fleet of the Nippon Yusen Karsha has been acquired for transport purposes by sea. Having no horses, or Ut any rate, insufficient horses. the empire has fallen back upon the abundant supply of human horses which has grown up of recent years. And for all purposes except as cavalry mounts-they are certainly superior to the four-footed variety. Where would you find horses to do thirty or forty miles a day, and day after day, with a load of two or three hundred pounds? Yet that is feat which Japanese lzurumaya think little of The power of endurance of these men-one likes to think of them as men aud not merely animals-are mar velous. The present writer has been drawn thirty-five miles in less than seven hours over bad road and remem- bers the holiday spent in which a couple of OsalSei coolies contracted to draw forty pounds of baggage thirty miles q day for an indefinite period. Such men, healthy, hardy, in perfect training. able to do their work upon little food, and that of the simplest, must be in valuable in a campaign such as Japan embarked upon. How many of them will survive tue rigors of Corean winter--for knrumaya arc not long, lived class--is another matter Since Japan is able to plant her flag in Pelsin, no small measure of the credit of such an achievment is certainly due to the harmless, necessary, jinriclSshaw cooly. St. Louis Republic.
 How Dead Snakes .sCome to Life.. In nearly every country in the world 1 there is superstition to the effect that serpent's head must be mashed to 2