ong at a time; for we were
town boys, and ignorant of horsemanship. The creature that fell to my
share was a very small mule, and yet so quick and active that it could
throw me without difficulty; and it did this whenever I got on it.
Then it would bray--stretching its neck out, laying its ears back,
and spreading its jaws till you could see down to its works. It was a
disagreeable animal, in every way. If I took it by the bridle and tried
to lead it off the grounds, it would sit down and brace back, and no
one could budge it. However, I was not entirely destitute of military
resources, and I did presently manage to spoil this game; for I had seen
many a steam-boat aground in my time, and knew a trick or two which even
a grounded mule would be obliged to respect. There was a well by the
corn-crib; so I substituted thirty fathom of rope for the bridle, and
fetched him home with the windlass.

I will anticipate here sufficiently to say that we did learn to ride,
after some days' practice, but never well. We could not learn to like
our animals; they were not choice ones, and most of them had annoying
peculiarities of one kind or another. Stevens's horse would carry him,
when he was not noticing, under the huge excrescences which form on the
trunks of oak-trees, and wipe him out of the saddle; in this way Stevens
got several bad hurts. Sergeant Bowers's horse was very large and
tall, with slim, long legs, and looked like a railroad bridge. His size
enabled him to reach all about, and as far as he wanted to, with his
head; so he was always biting Bowers's legs. On the march, in the sun,
Bowers slept a good deal; and as soon as the horse recognised that he
was asleep he would reach around and bite him on the leg. His legs were
black and blue with bites. This was the only thing that could ever make
him swear, but this always did; whenever the horse bit him he always
swore, and of course Stevens, who laughed at everything, laughed at
this, and would even get into such convulsions over it as to lose his
balance and fall off his horse; and then Bowers, already irritated
by the pain of the horse-bite, would resent the laughter with hard
language, and there would be a quarrel; so that horse made no end of
trouble and bad blood in the command.

However, I will get back to where I was--our first afternoon in the
sugar-camp. The sugar-troughs came very handy as horse-troughs, and we
had plenty of corn to fill them with. I ordered Ser