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Amazonia" it has been asked, "was as coarse and forbidding as 

 represented in her appearance, what induced Mr. Kissam to buy 

 her?" He wanted a carriage horse and he wanted one that could 

 not only show good action, but one that had a right of inherit- 

 ance to good action. He knew the Messengers and knew that 

 beauty and style were not family traits in that tribe. Many of 

 them were coarse, and possibly as coarse as Amazonia. Her very 

 coarseness and lack of style is, under the circumstances, a strong 

 argument that in choosing her Mr. Kissam had regard for her 

 Messenger blood. 



Another argument, resting on "the internal evidences," has 

 been urged with considerable force and it is very hard to answer 

 it. Amazonia was a mare of tested and known speed. She was 

 in a number of races to saddle and had won several of them in 

 less than three minutes along about 1816-18, and when Major 

 William Jones, in 1820, accepted the challenge to produce a horse 

 that could trot a mile in three minutes for one thousand dollars, 

 he knew very well what he was doing, for he had seen Amazonia 

 do it a number of times. Her best time was about 2:54, which 

 in that day was considered phenomenally fast. If we were to 

 meet a running horse out on the plains that could run away from 

 all others, we would naturally and justly conclude that he had 

 some of the blood of the race horse in his veins. If we have a 

 pacer and we learn he came from a section of the country where 

 a certain tribe of pacers abounded, we would naturally conclude 

 that he belonged to that tribe, especially if we knew there were 

 no other pacers in that section. If we have a trotter that can 

 go away from all other trotters, and we know that this trotter 

 came from a section abounding in a family of trotters, and in noth- 

 ing else that can trot, we naturally and justly conclude that this 

 trotter came from some member of that family of trotters. This 

 argument from the "internal evidences" seems almost axiomatic, 

 and when taken in connection with the historical argument, 

 unsatisfactory though it be, they together lay the foundation 

 for a very strong probability that Amazonia was by a son of 

 Messenger. 



Abdallah was in color a beautiful bay, about fifteen and a half 

 hands high, and there was a measure of coarseness about him that 

 he could not well escape, as both his sire and dam were endowed 

 with that undesirable quality. The one exception to this was in 

 the character of his coat, which was very fine and glossy when in 



