If the end crowns the work it may be said, although the end is not quite yet, that the work of transportation has been crowned.

No loss of human life by preventable cause has occurred, nor has complaint been heard of serious hitch of any kind.

The numbers speak for themselves.
The carriage of animals necessary for an army of the numbers transported would in any case be a weighty and troublesome task, but it has been rendered doubly so by the scanty resources of the scenes of war, by the terrible horse-sickness, and by the length of the voyage, which enfeebles the animals in a proportion ever increasing with the passage of the days.

The evil becomes yet greater from the pressing needs at the front, and the importunate urgency to hasten the animals forward, over a railroad journey of hundreds of miles, without first giving them time to regain the fulness of their strength.
The importance and embarrassing nature of this factor in the campaign are hard to overestimate.

The insufficient number of horses and their debility have doubtless accounted {p.098} for much of the delay and seeming languor of action, which has appeared otherwise inexplicable; the utter weakness of the poor beasts having indeed been expressly alleged as the reason for failure of cavalry or of artillery in more than one critical moment.