D2 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



were just as fleet as the larger horses, provided the weight was 

 graduated to their inches. There was one feature in these race 

 meetings that will be a surprise to many of my readers, as it was 

 to myself, and that is the fact that at most of these meetings 

 there was one four-mile race. Smaller prizes were run for by 

 horses classed as to size, and it may be noted that there was one 

 class "not exceeding thirteen hands." At these meetings the 

 distance never seems to have been less than one mile, while on 

 the southern border of the colony and in North Carolina, quarter 

 racing was very popular and very common from the earliest dates, 

 and it was kept up through the greater part of the eighteenth 

 century. For a fuller account of the racing of those early days 

 the reader is referred to the chapter on Virginia. 



In this old English, Irish and Scottish blood, full of the pacing 

 element, which we may now call "native" blood, we have the 

 real foundation upon which the English race horse was bred and 

 from which has come the approximate if not the complete equal 

 of the highest type of the English horse, in both speed and 

 stamina. The English and the American race horse came from 

 the same source and possess the same blood, with this trifling 

 distinction the native mares in England were bred to horses of 

 exotic, Saracenic origin, while the native mares of America were 

 bred to the descendants of that native-exotic combination. 

 Hence, with the original maternal ancestry of the same blood, 

 the combined and improved English descendant of that blood 

 became the paternal ancestor of the American race horse. We 

 must not forget that this "paternal ancestor" had been the re- 

 sult of crossing and recrossing, selecting, breeding and develop- 

 ing for nearly a hundred years, and that he was, therefore, a far 

 better horse and far more prepotent as a sire than the produce 

 of the first cross made under the direction of the Duke of New- 

 castle. We must not ignore the fact that while there were many 

 stallions brought over in the early days there were also a few 

 mares, but they were so few in number that their influence was 

 hardly appreciable in the new breed to be established. Saracenic 

 blood was touched very sparingly in the colonial days, as even 

 the names of not more than three or four have been preserved 

 in history. The only one of that period fully identified was 

 named Bashaw and was kept on Long Island about the year 1768. 

 Like all the others, he was called an Arabian, but according to 

 the showing of his advertisement he was bred by the Emperor of 



