THE COLONIAL HORSE 159 



In this state of growing public opinion in England it is well 

 not to omit from a nineteenth-century treatise on the pursuit 

 of sports some account of its development amongst English- 

 men on the other side of the world, and especially in those 

 islands, our exact antipodes, which are the nearest counterpart 

 to Great Britain, in situation, climate, institutions, and sur- 

 roundings, of any country in existence. 



It is certain that the introduction of horses into Australia 

 was simultaneous with its colonisation, for Captain Philip, on 

 his way out with the fleet that brought the first instalment of 

 convicts and colonists in 1788, shipped a stallion, three mares, 

 and three colts at the Cape of Good Hope. The earliest races 

 were held by the officers of the 73rd Regiment in 1810 at 

 Sydney, and by 1844 the number of horses had so increased 

 that regular shipments began to take place to India. The 

 horses brought with the first fleet do not appear to have been 

 thoroughbred. The thoroughbred horse in these colonies 

 owes its origin to English racehorses imported from home. 

 The first record of the importation of these is in the opening 

 years of the century, when a horse called Rockingham or Young 

 Rockingham was brought from the Cape. 



This horse was said to be by Rockingham, by Highflyer. 

 Old Hector, by Trentham out of Gohannas, dam, bred by Lord 

 Egremont, was brought from India in 1806, and was shortly 

 followed by Bay Camerton by Camerton out of Valtonia and 

 The Baron, by Milo out of a dam by Waxy ; while the earliest 

 record of a thoroughbred mare in Australia is in 1825, when 

 Mr. Icely imported a mare called Manto, by Soothsayer out 

 of one of the sisters to Lynceus. 



Thoroughbred mares and stallions (says the compiler of the New 

 Zealand Stud-book) were first imported to Australia more than 

 fifty years before a stud-book was published in any of the southern 

 colonies, and as these went to the studs of gentlemen living many 

 hundreds of miles apart in a thinly peopled country, and who kept 

 no records (or if kept they never were published) of the foals which 

 they bred, nearly all particulars of imported blood are now lost, 



