FOREIGN HORSES 25 



honour which had befallen to their sire by sweeping every- 

 thing before them, and a host of his sons and daughters 

 took rank amongst the great stud celebrities of their day. 

 It is rather remarkable, however, that his descendent in 

 tail-male, the famous and undefeated Barcaldine, and also 

 his sire Solon, should be possessed of that fury which 

 carried their great ancestor victorously through the duel 

 with Hobgoblin, for they were two of the vilest-tempered 

 horses of their own or any other day. Yet honour should 

 be paid where honour is due, and the Godolphin established 

 a great line, which has been adorned by the mighty deeds 

 of some of our most famous horses. Although sent as 

 a present by the Emperor of Morocco, and Syria is a 

 long way from Morocco, Lady Anne Blunt gives in 

 a letter these cogent reasons for giving credit to the 

 statement that the horse was an Arabian, and not 

 a Barb : — 



" Then, as to the Emperor of Morocco, if he wished to 

 make a present to the King of France, he would certainly 

 have preferred to give a stallion brought from Arabia, 

 rather than a local one. To this day it is, and has been 

 for centuries, customary in North Africa to send to Arabia 

 for anything wanted to be specially good. At least, I have 

 heard instances of this and been informed that it is so. 



"His personal stable name being 'Sham' — the Arabic 

 word for Syria — implies importation via Syria. I say 

 via Syria, as I should imagine he must have been from 

 a desert tribe, since his portrait is not a bit like any 

 of the many Barbs I saw in Algeria ; nor is it like the 

 Syrian country-breds, so-called Arabs (with much Arab 

 blood in them, but nothing pure remaining) which one sees 

 brought from Syria (and sometimes entered in the G.S.B., 

 some that one knows cannot be real). In 1881 I saw a 

 beautiful bay four-year-old mare in Ali Pasha Sherif's 

 stud in Cairo, with a crest the image of the Godolphin 

 Arabian's, and otherwise resembling him." 



Before taking leave of this subject, honourable mention 

 must be made of the magnificent stud of Arabians at the 

 Grabbet Park stud. There, gathered together by the un- 



