26 ROAD, TRACK, AND STABLE. 



Xearly fifty years later, in November, 1854, an old 

 bay horse called Abdallah was turned out on the sands 

 of this same Long Island, and abandoned to die of cold 

 and starvation. He had been sold for thirty-five dol- 

 lars to a fisherman, who attempted to put him in har- 

 ness. But Abdallah had never been broken to harness, 

 and being of a vicious temper he kicked the fish-wagon 

 to pieces, and thereupon the fisherman cruelly cast him 

 adrift. Abdallah was a grandson of Messenger, 1 and, 

 so far as we know, the best of his descendants in that 

 generation. He was an ugly, rat-tailed horse, but big, 

 strong, tough, and a fast trotter. Unlike the Messen- 

 ger stock in general, he had fine sloping shoulders. 

 Abdallah was the sire of Eysdyck's Hambletonian, 2 

 who founded the noted trotting family called the 

 Hambletonians. 3 



The dam of Eysdyck's Hambletonian, known to 

 fame as the Charles Kent mare, was of a lineage en- 

 tirely different, for her sire was Bellfounder. a Nor- 

 folk trotter. Bellfounder was imported in 1822 by 

 Mr. James Boott, a rich merchant of Boston, Massa- 

 chusetts, who paid seven hundred pounds sterling for 



1 Abdallah was sired by Mambrino. Mambrino was by Mes- 

 senger, out of a mare by imported Sour-Crout. Abdallah's dam 

 was said to be by another son of Messenger. 



- The sire of his grandam was called Bishop's " Hamiltonian." 

 after Alexander Hamilton. The name was however corrupted to 

 "Hambletonian," which was also the name of an English race 

 horse bred in Hambleton. a district of Yorkshire. 



3 Of the twenty trotting stallions who stand highest on the list, 

 judging by the records of their sons and daughters, all but two are 

 descended from Eysdyck's Hambletonian, either on the paternal or 

 maternal side ; and of those two one is also a descendant of Mes- 

 senger (in a different line), and the breeding of the other is un- 

 known on the dam's side. 



