Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 April 1902 — HORSES FOR BRITAIN'S ARMY. [ARTICLE]

HORSES FOR BRITAIN'S ARMY.

They Are Supplied Almost Exclusively by New Orleans. The figures in the- animal army that the British have employed in their efforts in South Africa are amazing. Over 600,000 horses and mules have been employed in the war by that one side. Five hundred thousand of these have been slaughtered or have died of disease. Over 160,000 have been supplied by the Untied States, $95,000,000 has been spent mounting and remounting the British cavalry, supplying and resupplying the muscle with which to move their artillery and furnishing and refurnishing their pack trains. The British remount establishment at New Orleans is a tremendous affair. It is the largest agency for the equipment of an army that has ever been maintained by one country at war within the borders of a neutral country. It has attracted not only the attention of the Boers and their sympathizers, but the commercial and diplomatic eye of all the great nations; and it is claimed that without this "base of supplies,” as the Boers term it, the Transvaal army would eventually cope successfully with the British. A suite of rooms as an office at the St. Charles Hotel are the headquarters of the "American Commission.” On the river front several miles below the city are the corrals, covering thirty or forty acres. The stables will accommodate 7,000 animals and the pasture that many more. There is a large hospital department, where a corps of veterinary surgeons are always at work, a branding department and lanumerable others. Instead of falling AS ns the war progresses, the station is £fbwiug continually, and the output from ’t is considerably more to-day than it Wls at the beginning of the war. About three transports a month used to leave. The number is now about double that, with the cargoes averaging from 1,600 to 2,000 head. The shipments from other stations have fallen off and some of them have been closed altogether for the benefit of the one in New Orleans. Some of the other countries have been drained, practically, of worthy animals. -That is, they are so scarce now that it does not pay to purchase there any longer piecemeal and at the necessarily advanuced figures. The prices of animals in other countries were always higher than in this, and now, even though the prices here have more than doubled in consequence of the enormous draught, those of other countries are from 50 to 75 per cent higher. In the beginning Texas furnished all the animals, and the proximity of the ranches of that State to the port was the cause of the establishment of the shipping depot in the Crescent City. It was said by several of the British officers that Texas could supply all the

horses and mules the country would need, for the war would be over in two or three months. But Texas has been drained, and Arkansas, and Tennessee, and Kentucky, and they are now sought as far north as Oregon. In 1899 there was such a competition in the sale that mules of the best quality were procurable for S4O, but now more than half that figure in pounds sterling is the price, and the freight from the point of purchase has increased in proportion to the increase of distance from this [Kiint. The fleet of transports lie at anchor in the Mississippi just below the city. Generally three or four are in port at a time. When one is ready for loading it is docked and the animals are driven aboard through long runways, tapered like a funnel at first and narrowing down to a width in which au animal eauuot turn around.