Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 11).djvu/33

scanty foothold. . . The horses, with their packs, were marched along in single file, the foremost led by the leader of the caravan, while each successive horse was tethered to the pack-saddle of the horse before him. A driver followed behind, to keep an eye upon the proper adjustment of the packs." The Pennsylvania historian Rupp informs us that in the Revolutionary period "five hundred pack-horses had been at one time in Carlisle [Pennsylvania], going thence to Shippensburg, Fort Loudon, and further westward, loaded with merchandise, also salt, iron, &c. The pack-horses used to carry bars of iron on their backs, crooked over and around their bodies; barrels or kegs were hung on each side of these. Colonel Snyder, of Chambersburg, in a conversation with the writer in August, 1845, said that he cleared many a day from $6 to $8 in crooking or bending iron and shoeing horses for western carriers at the time he was carrying on a blacksmith shop in the town of Chambersburg. The pack-horses were generally led in divisions of 12 or 15 horses, carrying about two hundred weight each . ; when the