COLONIAL HORSE HISTORY VIRGINIA. 11? 



negroes. This prosperity manifested itself strongly in the 

 direction of the popular sport of horse racing and improving the 

 size, quality, and fleetness of the running horse. England had 

 then been selecting, importing Eastern blood, and "breeding to 

 the winner" for a hundred years, with more or less intelligence 

 and success, while the colonists had rested content with the de- 

 scendants of the first importations from the mother country. 

 Doubtless progress had been made here too, but it was as the 

 progress of a poor man against another with great wealth and 

 backed by the encouragements of royalty. The English horse could 

 then run clear away from the Saracenic horse, his so-called pro- 

 genitor, and he was very much larger than that "progenitor." 

 We can understand how the speed might be increased by its de- 

 velopment in a series of generations and by always breeding to 

 the fastest, but the increase of size can hardly be accounted for 

 as the result of climatic causes but we are getting away from 

 the thought before us. When the Virginia planter found he had 

 a handsome balance in London, subject to his draft, he at once 

 ordered his factor to send him over the best racing stallion he 

 could find. The action of one planter stirred up half a dozen 

 others who felt they could not afford to be behind in the matter 

 of improvement, but more especially that they could not afford 

 to be behind in the finish at the fall and spring race meetings of 

 the future. These importations went on continuously for about 

 twelve years, and until they were interrupted by the excited rela- 

 tions and feelings between the colonies and the mother country 

 and the preparations for the War of the Revolution, which was 

 then imminent. After the close of the Revolution a perfect 

 avalanche of race horses was poured upon us, some of which were 

 good, but a great majority of them were never heard of after 

 their arrival, on the race course or elsewhere. But up to the close 

 of the century they had not succeeded in exterminating the 

 pacer the saddle horse of a hundred generations. 



As a specimen of how absurdly a man can talk and even write 

 on subjects of which he knows nothing, I cannot refrain from 

 giving the following from what an Englishman had to say in 

 1796 about the horses and horsemanship of Virginia: 



"The horses in common use in Virginia are all of a light description, chiefly 

 adapted for the saddle; some of them are handsome, but are for the most 

 part spoiled by the false gaits which they are taught. The Virginians are 

 wretched horsemen, as indeed are all the Americans I have met with, excepting 



