THE BLACK HAWK OR MOKGAN" FAMILY. 387 



witnessed in a trotting horse, that I felt the hair rising on my 

 head. The running horse was next to me, and notwithstanding 

 my elevation, Ethan was stretched out so near the ground that 

 I could see nothing of him but his ears. I fully helieved that, 

 for several rods at this point, they were going at a two-minute 

 gait. 



4 'It was impossible that this terrible pace could be maintained 

 long, and just before reaching the first turn Dexter's head began 

 to swim and the team passed him and took the track, reaching 

 the first quarter-pole in thirty-two seconds, with Dexter three or 

 four lengths behind. The same lightning speed was kept up 

 through the second quarter, reaching the half-mile pole in 1:04, 

 with Dexter still farther in the rear. Mace then took a pull on 

 his team, and came home a winner by six or eight lengths, in 

 2:15. When this time was put on the blackboard, the response 

 of the multitude was like the roar of the ocean. Although 

 some distance away, through the second quarter of this heat I 

 had a fair, unobstructed side view of the stallion and of his action, 

 when going at the lightning rate of 2:08 to the mile. I could 

 not observe that he received the slightest degree of propulsion 

 from the running horse; and my conviction was then, and is now, 

 that any such propulsion would have interfered with his own un- 

 approachable action, and would have retarded rather than helped 

 him. The most noticeable feature in his style of movement was 

 the remarkable lowness to which he dropped his body and the 

 straight, gliding line it maintained at that elevation. 



"The team now had the inside, and in the first attempt they 

 were started for the second heat, but they did not appear to me 

 to be going so fast as in the first heat. Before they had gone 

 many rods Ethan lost his stride and Dexter took the track at the 

 very spot where he had lost it in the first heat. The team soon 

 ot to work, and near the beginning of the second quarter col- 

 lared Dexter, but the stallion broke soon after and fell back, not 

 yards, nor lengths, but rods before he caught. Incredible as it 

 may seem, when he again got his feet, he put on such a burst of 

 speed as to overhaul Dexter in the third quarter, when he broke 

 again and Mace had to pull him nearly to a standstill before he 

 recovered. Dexter was now a full distance ahead and the heat 

 appeared to be his beyond all peradventure. I was watching the 

 team in its troubles very closely and my idea of the distance lost 

 was the result of a deliberate and careful estimate at the moment; 



