Tasmanians. 151 



"The running was absurdly bad, but there were some very nice horses on the course, and a 

 few of a good old-fashioned stamp, such as is not common anywhere, and is unknown in New 

 South Wales. Among the running horses was a mare worth going some distance to see, 'The 

 Farmer's Daughter,' a splendid creature for size, shape, colour, and breeding; 16 hands high, jet- 

 black without a speck, and of admirable symmetry. She would have made a sensation in 

 Rotten Row mounted by one of the tall swells of the period, although far from first-class as 

 a racehorse." 



Such were the impressions of an English colonel thirty years ago. Twenty years later 

 a Tasmanian colonist* lifted up his voice, or rather took up his pen, to point out the steady 

 deterioration of the Australian horses which had taken place within his remembrance. He 

 commences by saying that, " Circumstances have led me, during twenty years, to pass more 

 time in the saddle than falls to the lot of most men. The journeys I have made of from 

 100 to 1,000 miles are innumerable. I have lived amongst people of similar occupations. 

 I have had personal experience of the horses of England, Ireland, France, Spain, Turkey, 

 Syria, Palestine, Eg)pt, Brazil, and New Zealand, as well as those of Australia and New 

 Zealand." 



In the early days of New South Wales considerable care was used in breeding saddle- 

 horses. Sires were selected with some judgment, and fillies allowed to reach a fit age before 

 they were bred from. 



The first horse stock came from England ; full-sized mares were imported from the 

 Cape of Good Hope and from Valparaiso, pony mares from Lombock and Timor; a constant 

 succession of thoroughbred sires were imported from England, most of them unfortunately 

 racing weeds. Arab sires have also been introduced from the Cape and India, but not in 

 sufficient numbers to have much effect on the native breed. But as colonists multiplied 

 and spread over the country, and horses were bred in increasing numbers with little or no 

 attention to the quality of the sires, or the age of the dams, the horse stock rapidly 

 deteriorated. 



The foundation of the colonies of South Australia and Victoria (Melbourne) opened a new 

 market for the horses of New South Wales, and this is the Tasmanian's account of them in 

 1840: — -"When I landed in Melbourne horses were coming slowly from the Sydney county — poor, 

 stunted, miserable wretches, the produce of early breeding and haphazard sires ; leggy, boneless 

 abortions, with here and there an occasional 'Satellite' horse, one of the remnants of the 

 original New South Wales stock, ' sinewy, of exquisite symmetry, with great power.' Worthless 

 as the mares were, anything decent sold for ;^6o ; but before the flood of insolvency of 1843 

 ceased three of these £i>o horses would barely fetch in the market of New South Wales the 

 price of one saddle. 



"Taken as a whole, the saddle-horses of Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland— of 

 which I speak from personal observation (I believe those of Adelaide offer no exception) are 

 in height decidedly below those of England, inferior in figure, utterly wanting in quality. 

 Year by year they have been settling down to a dead level of badness, and the bright excep- 

 tions that were frequent twenty years ago (1843) have all but totally disappeared. Amongst 

 the scores that are sold by auction every day, scarcely one tolerably good colt could be 

 picked up. The Australian horse, in comparison with the English horse, is ill-broken, his 

 temper cross, his paces disagreeable, and, if compared with the horses of the Arabs, of southern 



• " English, Arab, Andahisian, ami Aiulralian Breeds of Horses." lly E. M. Curr. Melbourne. 



