THE TROTTING-IIORSE OF AMERICA. 271 



Vermont Hambletonian was the sire of some capital 

 trotters besides Sontag. Green-Mountain Maid, Gray Ver- 

 mont, True John, and other noted horses, proceeded from 

 him. Sontag was about fifteen three, a long-tailed mare. 

 When she first came to New York, at five years old or 

 thereabouts (it is not always very easy to tell their ages 

 precisely some time afterwards), she was a pacer. 



In this race against Flora, William 'Whelan drove the 

 big gray mare, and Warren Peabody drove Mora. Sontag 

 won it in three heats. Time, 2.31, 2.33, 2.35. Flora was 

 next matched to trot twenty miles within an hour, to a 

 wagon, for $5,000. The only horse that had ever trotted 

 twenty miles in an hour at all was Trustee, and his perfor- 

 mance was in harness ; therefore I do not think this was a 

 good match for the little mare. She lost it. At the end of 

 the eighth mile, she threw a shoe and cut herself; and, at the 

 end of the twelfth mile, she was drawn. The truth is, that, 

 in dogging along mile after mile for twenty times round the 

 course, many horses not half as good as Flora Temple could 

 do what she could not. I do not mean to say that she might 

 not, under some conditions, have trotted twenty miles in an 

 hour ; but that kind of going on, in a tread-mill sort of way, 

 was not her strong point. 



That same year, Lady Fulton, a niare much inferior to 

 Flora, trotted twenty miles in an hour ; and the lunatic sort 

 of horse Captain McGowan has since done it. 



Flora took a trip to Boston after her race against time, 

 and there went a match for $3,000, over the Cambridge 

 Course, with the black gelding Know-No thing, who was 

 afterwards more famous as Lancet, and who is now turned 

 out in John I. Snediker's pasture, just beyond the trees. 

 Know-Nothing is said to have been a son of Vermont Black 

 Hawk. He did not look much like that stock then, and he 

 looks less like them now. He was and is a very long horse, 

 fifteen three in height, with a long tail. There is a wiry, 

 blood-like look about him, not without an indication of tern- 



