258 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



healthy condition. His reputation as a great trotting sire was 

 very widely extended during his lifetime, but his lack of sym- 

 metry and his "rat tail/' which he inherited from his dam, so 

 impaired his acceptability with the public that he never was 

 very largely patronized. Besides this he had an unconquerable 

 will of his own, which he transmitted to his offspring very gener- 

 ally. This willfulness was not a desirable quality in a horse for 

 drudgery, and hence most of his patrons were such as were 

 seeking for gameness and speed. When he was four years old he 

 was not in the stud, and it is understood that Mr. Tredwell un- 

 dertook to break him thoroughly and train him that year. It is 

 also understood that when put in harness he kicked everything 

 to pieces within his reach and that all thoughts of training were 

 soon abandoned. He never was in harness again until, in ex- 

 treme old age, he was sold for five dollars to a fish peddler, and 

 the peddler's wagon was soon reduced to kindling wood. 



He was kept at different points on Long Island, and one season 

 in New Jersey, till the fall of 1839, when he, with Commodore, 

 another son of Mambrino, was sold to Mr. John W. Hunt, of Lex- 

 ington, Kentucky, where they made the season of 1840. Com- 

 modore was much the more attractive horse of the two, and did 

 a large business, while Abdallah was almost wholly neglected, 

 leaving only about half a dozen colts. Meantime his progeny on 

 the island began to show their speed and their racing qualities; a 

 company was formed and he was brought back from Kentucky 

 and made the seasons of 1841 and 1842 at the Union Course, 

 Long Island. He was at Goshen, New York, 1843, at Freehold, 

 New Jersey, 1844 and 1845, at Chester, New York, 1846-47-48, at 

 Bull's Head, New York, 1849, and did nothing, then at the 

 Union Course and Patchogue, Long Island, and was not off the 

 island again. After the period of his usefulness was past his in- 

 human owners turned him out on a bleak, sandy beach on the 

 Long Island shore, and there he starved to death in the piercing 

 November winds, without a shelter or a friend. 



Abdallah was the sire of Hambletonian, 1.0, the greatest of all 

 trotting progenitors and greater than all others combined. This 

 fact alone has made his name imperishable in the annals of the 

 trotting horse. A number of his other sons were kept for stal - 

 lions and some of them lived to old age, but they were all failures 

 in the stud. His daughters, generally, proved to be most valua- 

 ble brood mares, producing speed to almost any and every cross. 



