The Letters of a Remittance Man to his Mother

The men came out from town and immediately suggested that we untangle the oxen, which they finally did for us, and we found that the animals were not injured further than being badly cut by the barbed wire. We all went back to town, and collected our goods and chattels on the way, and two days later left again for this place.

While in town I visited several of the shops again, and in one of them I saw some appliances made of two straps connected together by a chain, which I learned were hobbles, used for fastening the feet of horses together that they might not run away. I asked the shopkeeper if they could be applied to oxen, and was assured they could. As I had been warned about a steep bit of a hill which lay on the way to this place, and that I should not let the oxen run down it, I conceived that if I should hobble them at the top of the hill there should be no danger of them going too fast.

When we again set out and when we came to the hill about which I