536 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



the Ohio river. This was a great business at the beginning of this 

 century, and for forty or fifty years afterwards. The fame of those great 

 teams, the great wagons and the great loads they hauled over the moun- 

 tains spread far and wide; and as a special designation that went with 

 them they were called "Conestoga" horses and the wagons were called 

 •'Conestoga" wagons, named after a creek in Lancaster county, Pennsyl- 

 vania, where many large horses were bred. There was no particular line 

 Of blood to be followed, for a large horse bred west of the mountains was 

 Jjust as certainly a Conestoga as though he had been bred in Lancaster 

 county. 



"The Conestoga was simply the horse that was best suited for a big 

 team with an enormous load, and he varied in size from sixteen and one- 

 half to eighteen hands in height, and from 1600 to 1900 pounds in 

 :weight. These measurements he reached by breeding for the one pur- 

 pose of strength and weight. It is safe to conclude that in the latter 

 part of the last century breeding animals of large size were brought over 

 the water, for we can hardly conceive of their being descended from the 

 little pacers preceding them only fifty or sixty years." 



It appears from this that the draft stallions advertised in the mid- 

 dle of the eighteenth century were from sixteen and a half to eighteen 

 hands high and weighed from 1600 to 1900 pounds, and he concludes 

 that there must have been an importation of larger horses, for it la 

 inconceivable that these should have descended from the little pacers 

 of fifty or sixty years previous, only thirteen and a half hands in height 

 The recollections of our boyhood days with reference to horses cor- 

 respond very closely to this testimony. It matters not where this 

 blood came from originally. The fact remains beyond all question that 

 in the richer valleys where they grow big wheat and big blue grass and 

 big corn and big clover they also grew one of the best types of draft- 

 horses ever grown in this or any other country; not as large as the 

 largest specimens of draft-horses now, but horses that could make a 

 journey with wagons carrying enormous loads for 300 or 400 miles on the 

 macadamized roads, which in itself would weed out the weaklings. It 

 is a great pity that no great breeder ever undertook the task, which would 

 have made him famous for all time in America, of developing this noble 

 breed of horses by selection. The building of the railroads naturally 

 changed the type of horses. What was then wanted was greater size, 

 for dray work in the cities, and this accounts for the disappearance to a 

 great extent of this breed, and the attempt to obain greater weight by 

 importing horses, in the same way that the eighteenth century saddle- 

 horses disappeared with the advent of better roads and carriages. 



The last time we were back at the old home, in talking the matter 

 over with some of the old boys, thoy shook their heads, and said they did 

 not believe the imported horses had in any way improved the breed; 

 that, in fact, it had deteriorated in the quality of the hone. We cite this, 

 however, to show that there need be no fear on the part of any intelligent 

 man as to the possibility of the American farmers developing their own 

 type of draft-horse, using, of course, the best blood available. In fact 



