108 TRAINING THE TROTTING HOKSE. 



of every one of the Palo Alto stars has had its lessons, 

 and the training of each one contributed its share in 

 showing where improvements can be learned in the 

 details of developing trotting horses. I will not, of 

 course, attempt to sketch all of the horses I have 

 trained and driven to fast records, but will confine my- 

 self chiefly to the great performers, who have made 

 themselves an enduring name in trotting history. 



It being desirable in a measure to observe chrono- 

 loo'ical order, we will beo^in with the earher trotters 

 rather than with the greater ones. As already noted, 

 Occident and Abe Edgington were the first horses I 

 worked at Palo Alto, and as these horses were " made'^ 

 before they reached my hands, I must be brief with 

 them, 



Occident was a brown gelding, foaled in 1863, and 

 was bred by a Mr. Shaw in the Sacramento Yalley. 

 His pedigree did not amount to much, but the blood of 

 his grandsire, St. Clair, has been made famous by such 

 trotters as Manzanita, 2:16; Bonita, 2:18^; Wildflower, 

 2:21, and Fred Crocker, 2:25i. Old St. Clair, the 

 pacer, was an "overland horse" that came across the 

 plains, from no one knows where to California in 1849. 

 He worked as a dray-horse in the streets of Sacra- 

 mento, and later as leader in a stage team, but was 

 finally, after he was foundered and good for nothing 

 else, put into the stud in that city by Mr. John Miller, 

 and was burned to death about 186-1. Besides Doc, the 

 sire of Occident, he sired Lady St. Clair that has the 

 fastest five-mile pacing record in the world — 12:541, 

 made in 1874. His son, Doc, got onlv a few foals, and 

 died on his way to Oregon r,bout twenty-five years ago. 



