44 RACEHORSES IN AUSTRALIA 



"cannot be ascertained." As Lady Trenton was foaled as lately as 1889, it 

 is a little curious that her grand dam's pedigree should be wrapped in mystery. 



Sir Rupert Clarke's La Carabine was the Champion winner in 1901 and 

 1902. She is pronounced unhesitatingly "a Queen." Her first season did not 

 appear to hold out much hope of mighty deeds in the future; at least, to those 

 who were not acquainted with her domestic history. She was a chestnut, 

 foaled in 1 894, by Carbine out of imported Oratava, by Barcaldine, from 

 TuUia, by Petrarch, her dam Chevisaunce, by Stockwell out of Paradigm, by 

 Paragone from Ellen Home, the maternal ancestress of Bend Or. Her 

 breeder was Mr. O'Shanassy, but it was in the nomination of Mr. Herbert 

 Power that she was launched upon her career as a two-year-old. She was an 

 exceedingly mean-looking creature during her first season. 



Being much enamoured of her pedigree, I undertook the long journey 

 to Melbourne from the Murray in order that 1 might see her perform. 1 was 

 standing in the saddling enclosure looking out for the filly, when there passed 

 me a mean, ragged-looking, little thing, with a mournful cast of countenance, 

 and she knuckled over on both her hind fetlocks at each step. "What on 

 earth is that miserable little brute? " I inquired from a knowledgeable friend 

 at my side. "Oh! that's a two-year-old in Jimmy Wilson's stable. La 

 Carabine they call her." This was a great shock, and her running that season 

 did not bewray the great possibilities that lay beneath her rather washy 

 chestnut hide. She was successful in a Nursery at Randwick in the autumn, 

 carrying seven stone seven, but beating nothing of any great account, and 

 she was absolutely unsuccessful as a three-year-old. At four years she managed 

 to dead heat at Flemington with Dreamland, who, however, beat her in the 

 run off, at a mile and a half. But for this faint silver lining to her cloud, 

 everything was still in darkness. But 1 knew that she could beat Key, one of 

 the greyhounds of the turf, at anything beyond half a mile, and that she 

 could stay. Therefore, Hope was not yet altogether dead. 



Ere the next season had dawned, however, La Carabine had passed into 

 the hands of Mr. W. R. Wilson, of St. Albans, whose manager, Mr. Leslie 

 McDonald, was certainly second to none as a trainer and stud master, if, 

 indeed, he was not facile princeps of all his contemporaries, or of all those 

 who had gone before him. And it may be that he will retain his invincibility 

 in his own line for all time. The only man whom I can ever think of as being 

 his "marrow" is Mr. J. E. Brewer. Under Mr. McDonald's fostering care 

 the little mare won the Stand Handicap at the Flemington October Meeting, 

 and, after an interval of non-success, she was returned as winner of the 

 Australian Cup, run over two miles and a quarter. She had now discovered 

 her metier, for in Sydney, during April, the Cup fell to her at two miles, she 

 carrying eight stone two. Two days after she beat Merriwee, weight-for-age, 

 at three miles in the A.J.C. Plate, and travelling on to Adelaide, she smashed 

 the opposition in the Alderman Cup, a mile and three-quarters, carrying the 

 substantial impost of nine seven. Now a six-year-old, and in the ownership 

 of Sir Rupert Clarke, after failing in the Melbourne Cup with nine seven, she 

 gained a bracket in the V.R.C. Handicap, carrying the same weight as in the 

 Cup, and in the autumn, the Essendon Stakes, and the Champion Stakes fell 

 to her. In Sydney the Cumberland Stakes (2 miles), and the A.J.C. Plate 

 (3 miles) were hers, and she completed her triumphs with a couple of 

 victories in Adelaide, the last of which was the S.A.J. C. Handicap, carrying 

 ten stone six. She ran but four times as a seven-year-old, and her one achieve- 

 ment was once more winning the Championship, on this occasion beating 

 another reigning Queen, the peerless Wakeful. She was retired to the stud in 



