acquisitions in enthusiastic terms to Arthur
Young. He called the mules "a very excellent race of animals," cheap to
keep and willing workers. Recalling, perhaps, that a king's son once
rode upon a mule, he proposes to breed heavy ones from "Royal Gift" for
draft purposes and lighter ones from the "Knight" for saddle or
carriage. He adds: "Indeed in a few years, I intend to drive no other in
my carriage, having appropriated for the sole purpose of breeding them,
upwards of twenty of my best mares."

Ah, friend George, what would the world not give to see thee and thy
wife Martha driving in the Mount Vernon coach down Pennsylvania Avenue
behind four such long-eared beasts!

In all his stock raising, as in most other matters, Washington was
greatly hampered by the carelessness of his overseers and slaves. It is
notorious that free negroes will often forget or fail to water and feed
their own horses, and it may easily be believed that when not influenced
by fear, slaves would neglect the stock of their master. Among the
General's papers I have found a list of the animals that died upon his
Mount Vernon estate from April 16, 1789, to December 25, 1790. In that
period of about twenty months he lost thirty-three horses, thirty-two
cattle and sixty-five sheep! Considering the number of stock he had, a
fifth of that loss would have been excessive. During most of the period
he was away from home looking after the affairs of the nation and in his
absence his own affairs suffered.

Hardly a report of his manager did not contain some bad news. Thus one
of January, 1791, states that "the Young black Brood Mare, with a long
tail, which Came from Pennsylvania, said to be four Years old next
spring ... was found with her thigh broke quite in two." This happened
on the Mansion House farm. On another farm a sheep was reported to have
been killed by dogs while a second had died suddenly, perhaps from
eating some poisonous plant.

Dogs, in fact, constituted an ever present menace to the sheep and it
was only by constant watchfulness that the owner kept his negroes from
overrunning the place with worthless curs. In 1792 he wrote to his
manager: "I not only approve of your killing those Dogs which have been
the occasion of the late loss, & of thinning the Plantations of others,
but give it as a positive order that after saying what dog, or dogs
shall remain, if any negro presumes under any pretence whatsoever, to
preserve, or bring one