Thoroughbreds m A nf erica; 

 won her steeplechases at her fences ; and I attribute her extraordinary quickness in jumping 



THE THOROUGHBRED ABROAD— AMERICA. 

 Thoroughbred horses were imported by the colonists of Maryland and Virginia as early 

 as the re,gn of George II. ; the first pedigree horse, Spark, having, according to tradition be n 

 presented to_ Governor Ogle, about 1750, by Lord Baltimore, who had received him as a present 

 from the Pnnce of Wales, the father of George III. The work from which n.y information is 

 obtamed has a hst of stallions and mares imported between 1750 and 1865, which fills one 

 hundred and fifty m.per.al octavo pages,* and records with barbarous details matches run 

 between _ nval States and between North and South, within the last half-century. The .reat 

 .nsurrect:on of the Confederate States extinguished the wealth that supported expensive amusements 

 m the South ; and m the North a passion for trotting in harness superseded flat racing for a while 



In the sprmg of 1879 great sensation was created in the racing world by the first public 

 appearance in England of M. Pierre Lorillard's six-year-old brown gelding. Parole, by Leamington 

 out of Maiden, who won the Newmarket Handicap, easily beating Mr. Gretton's Isonomy when in 

 receipt of eight pounds from the latter. Again, at the Epsom Spring Meeting, Parole was 

 victorious in the City and Suburban and Metropolitan Handicaps, but was beaten at Chester in the 

 Tradesman s Cup, although able upon the following day to win the Great Cheshire Handicap At 

 Ascot Parole failed to get a place in the Ascot Stakes; and thus having been beaten in two lon^ 

 races, he acquired the reputation of being a first-class animal over mile-and-a-quarter coursed 

 although, like so many of his English rivals, unable to compass a longer distance 



Amongst the imported horses mentioned in Forester's book is Messenger, the son of 

 Mambrino, who arrived in 1786, and was considered by a writer in 1856 to have been "the 

 best horse, take him all in all, ever brought to America/' both as the sire of racehorses and 

 of roadsters. Messenger must have lived to an immense age, or the writer of the following, 

 passage must have been a centenarian. "Well do I remember him-his large bony head ratlicT 

 short stra^ht neck, with windpipe and nostrils nearly twice as large as ordinary, with his low 

 withers, shoulders somewhat upright, but deep, close, and strong. Behind lay the perfection 

 and power of the machine. His barrel, loin, hips, and quarters were incomparably superior 

 to all others; his hocks and knees were unusually large; below them his limbs were of 

 medmm size, but flat, strong, and remarkably clean, and, either in standing or in action their 

 position was perfecff This is interesting, because the best American trotting-horses, as already 

 noted, trace their pedigree to Messenger, and also because the description so closely agrees with 

 the engraving of Mambrino. ^ 



TT ■f'^T '''" ^'"'' '^^^ """"^ '^^°' ^"'°"-'' *" importations of English racehorses into the 

 United States were Priam, winner of the Derby in 1830; Spaniel, winner of the Derby 

 1831; Barefoot, winner of the St. Leger, 1823; St. Giles, winner of the Derby, 1832- and 

 with a score of others, including Zinganee and Lord Jersey's Glencoe, of the best blood 

 ftough unsuccessful in the greatest English races, although Glencoe won the Two Thousand' 

 Guineas, and was the second three-year-old that ever won the Goodwood Cup. The edition of 

 Frank Foresters "American Horse" of 1871 gives the name of no English racehorse later than 

 1865 It may therefore be presumed that the importations have not been of any turf importance 

 Enough has been quoted to show that, like every other country, the United States rely 



* " The American Horse," by Frank Forester. t Correspondent of Frank Forester, 1856. 



