The Foundation Horses 89 



breeding ; and the story runs that a lieutenant, 

 in the army of Washington, sneaked into De 

 Lancy's headquarters at White Plains, New 

 York, mounted the stallion, and rode off with 

 him. The pedigree of True Briton, as traced 

 by Mr. Battell, is by Lloyd's Traveller, son of 

 Morton's imported Traveller and imported Jennie 

 Cameron ; dam Betty Leeds, daughter of Babra- 

 ham by Godolphin Arabian, and out of a mare 

 by Bolton Starling, she out of a mare by Godol- 

 phin Arabian. The dam of Justin Morgan is 

 given as by Diamond by Church's Wildair by 

 imported Wildair by Cade by Godolphin Ara- 

 bian. This tracing carries us to the desert, 

 where the Arabs created breeds which have sur- 

 vived the vicissitudes of time. It is an axiom 

 that purity of blood will breed on with a higher 

 degree of certainty than any other, therefore 

 Oriental strains are always valued in a pedigree. 

 The lines of Justin Morgan, as tabulated by Mr. 

 Battell, will be accepted by some critics with 

 mental reservation ; but the forcible manner in 

 which the stallion stamped himself upon his de- 

 scendants makes preposterous the suggestion that 

 he was a plebeian of plebeians. While owned 

 by Mr. Morgan the stallion was called Figure, 



