the roadside for the buzzards and crows. These they can recall by hundreds; but not the dimmest picture of a single dead mule, and they will assure you that, to the best of their knowledge and belief, the government did not lose one of these animals during the war. I recently conversed with an old soldier who remembered having once seen, on the march, the four hoofs of a mule those and nothing more; and the conclusion that he arrived at was that the mule, in a fit of temper, had kicked off his hoofs and gone up.

Another soldier, a mule-driver, remembers of seeing a muleteam which had run off the corduroy road into a mire of quicksand. The wagon had settled down till its body rested in the mire, but nothing of the team was visible save the ear-tips of the off pole mule.

As a fact, however, the mules, though tough and hardy, died of disease much as did the horses. Glanders took off a great many, and black tongue, a disease peculiar to them, caused the death of many more. But, with all their outs, they were of invaluable service to the armies, and well deserve the good opinions which came to prevail regarding their many excellent qualities as beasts of burden. Here is an incident of the war in which the mule was the hero of the hour:

On the night of Oct. 28, 1863, when General Geary's Division of the Twelfth Corps repulsed the attacking forces of Longstreet at Wauhatchie, Tennessee, about two hundred mules, affrighted by the din of battle, rushed in the darkness into the midst of Wade Hampton's Rebel troops, creating something of a pani among them, and causing a portion of them to fall back, supposing that they were at

tacked by cavalry. Some one in the Union army, who knew the circumstances, taking Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" as a basis, composed and circulated the following description of the ludicrous event:

-:

CHARGE OF THE MULE BRIGADE.

Half a mile, half a mile,

Half a mile onward,

Right through the Georgia troops

Broke the two hundred.

When can their glory fade?
Oh, the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.

Honor the charge they made!

Honor the Mule Brigade,
Long-eared two hundred!

The following plaint in behalf of this veteran quadruped will close this sketch:

THE ARMY MULE IN TIME OF PEACE.

"That men are ungrateful can plainly be seen

In the case of that mule standing out on the green.
His features are careworn, bowed down is his head,
His spirit is broken: his hopes have all fled.
He thinks of the time when the battle raged sore,
When he mingled his bray with the cannon's loud roar;
When Uncle Sam's soldiers watched for him to come,
Hauling stores of provisions and powder and rum;
When his coming was greeted with cheers and huzzas,
And the victory turned on the side of the stars.

"These thoughts put new life into rickety bones-
He prances just once, then falls over and groans.
A vision comes over his poor mulish mind,
And he sees Uncle Sam, with his agents behind,
Granting pensions by thousands to all who apply,
From the private so low to the officer high;
To the rich and the poor, the wise man and fool,
But, alas! there is none for the 'poor army mule.'"

CHAPTER XVI.

HOSPITALS AND AMBULANCES.

HE sketch embodied in this chapter is an attempt in a limited space to give the public a more adequate idea of the medical department of the army, what it was, how it grew up, and something of what it accomplished. I enter upon it with a quasi-apology for its incompleteness, understanding fully how inadequate any mere sketch must be regarded by

those whose labors in this department made its record one of the most remarkable in the history of the war; yet, like all the other topics treated in this volume, it must undergo abridgment, and I can only hope that what is presented will, in some degree, do justice to this much neglected but very interesting theme in the Rebellion's annals.

At the time of the battle of Bull Run there was no plan in operation by which the wounded in that battle were cared for. Before this engagement took place, while the troops were lying in and around Washington, general hospitals had been established to provide for the sick. For this purpose five or six hotels, seminaries, and infirmaries, in Washington and Georgetown, and two or three in Alexandria, had been taken possession of, and these were all the hospital accommodations to be found at the end of the first three months. So general was the opinion that the war