Another point in that case is this:  at three years old, a mule is in a worse condition, generally, than he is at any other period in life.  At three, he is more subject to distemper, sore eyes, and inflammation of all parts of the head and body.  He becomes quite weak from not being able to eat, gets loose and gaunt, and is at that time more subject and more apt to take contagious diseases than at any other change he may go through.  There is but one sure way to remedy this evil.  Do not buy three year old mules to put to work that it requires a five or six year old mule to perform.  Six three year old mules are just about as fit to travel fifteen miles per day, with an army wagon loaded with twenty-five hundred and their forage, as a boy, six years of age, is fit to do a man’s work.  During the first twelve months of the war, I had charge of one hundred and six mule-teams, and I noticed in particular, that not one solitary mule as high as six years old gave out on the trips that I made with the teams.  I also noticed that, on most occasions, the three year olds gave out, or became so leg-weary that they could scarce walk out of the way of the swingle-tree, whereas those of four and upward would be bright and brisk, and able to eat their forage when they came to camp.  The three year old mules would lie down and not eat a bite, through sheer exhaustion.  I also noticed that nearly all the three year old mules that went to Utah, in 1857, froze to death that winter, while those whose ages varied from four, and up to ten, stood the winter and came out in the spring in good working condition.  In August, 1855, I drove a six-mule team to Fort Riley, in Kansas Territory, from Fort Leavenworth, on the Missouri River, loaded with twelve sacks of grain.  It took us thirteen days to make the trip.  When we reached Fort Riley there were not fifty mules, in the train of one hundred and fifty, that would have sold at public sale for thirty dollars, and a great many gave out on account of being too young and the want of proper treatment.  In the fall of 1860, I drove a six-mule team, loaded with thirty hundred weight, twenty-five days’ rations for myself and another man, and twelve days’ storage for the team, being allowed twelve pounds to each mule per day.  I drove this team to Fort Laramie, in Nebraska Territory, and from there to Fort Leavenworth, on the Missouri River.  I made the drive there and back in thirty-eight days, and laid over two and a half days out of that.  The distance travelled was twelve hundred and thirty-six miles.  After a rest of two days, I started with the same team, and drove to Fort Scott, in Kansas Territory, in five days, a distance of one hundred and twenty miles.  I went with Harney’s command, and, for the most part of the time, had no hay, and was forced to subsist our animals on dry prairie grass, and had a poor supply of even that.  Notwithstanding this, I do not believe that any mule in the team lost as much as ten pounds of flesh.  Each of these mules, let me say, was upward of five years old.