114 The Trotting and the Pacing Horse 



Hambletonian. Mr. Thorne, who from boyhood 

 had been a close student of form and breeding, 

 described Mambrino Chief as a horse with a larc^e 

 head, full of character ; a good neck, with excel- 

 lent shoulders ; legs strong and fluted, but with 

 a large foot subject to quarter crack. In 1853 

 James B. Clay, a son of Henry Clay, of Ashland, 

 was in New York, and he consulted Mr. Thorne 

 with regard to the purchase of a trotting stallion 

 to take to Kentucky. As Mambrino Chief had 

 size with substance and was showins: well at the 

 trot, he was warmly recommended ; and in 1854 

 he was established in a new home in the Blue- 

 grass district of Kentucky. His coming excited 

 a feeling of jealousy in certain quarters, and he 

 was matched against Pilot Jr., at two-mile heats, 

 for ^1000 a side. The race did not take place, 

 because Mambrino Chief showed so much speed 

 in his training as to frighten the owner of Pilot 

 Jr. into paying forfeit. General John B. Castle- 

 man of Louisville frequently saw Mambrino 

 Chief at Ashland, and in a paper read before the 

 American Saddle Horse Breeders' Association, in 

 1903, he said of him: "There had rarely been 

 then or since so coarse a stallion in any stud 

 in Kentucky. He was approximately 16 hands 



