168 MEMORIES OF MEN AND HORSES 



Jacinto stud, where he left many great brood mares 

 and also established a flourishing male line of Hermit. 

 Another of those early importations was Orbit, winner 

 of the Eclipse Stakes, and he too made very good ; 

 but there came a blank of ten or fifteen years before 

 the financial equilibrium was restored, and since then 

 blood-stock business in the Argentine has been humming. 

 Some years before I went to South America I had 

 sent Ercildoune to Uruguay, through the great auctioneer 

 firm of Adolfo Bullrich & Co. of Buenos Aires, Senor 

 Carlos Reyles being the buyer. This was in 1901, and 

 the price was 2000 guineas. It is a mystery why this 

 horse should not have made a successful stallion, for 

 he was really the best son of Maid Marian, and, after 

 winning the Duke of York Stakes, only just missed 

 the Cesare witch, by the narrowest margin and he 

 was lame on the morning of that race. His half- 

 brothers, Polymelus and Grafton, made great names, 

 but Ercildoune was an utter failure at the stud 

 possibly on account of Uruguayan conditions. Senor 

 Carlos Reyles later on got me to buy him a good 

 many brood mares, most of which did well, and he 

 himself came to England more than once to super- 

 intend purchases. This was rather embarrassing, for 

 I could not speak his language nor he mine, and he 

 was provided with an interpreter who sat between us 

 at sales, but was entirely ignorant of blood-stock terms, 

 or anything else to do with horses. Thus, while the 

 late Sir Blundell Maple's stock was being sold off in 

 Park Paddocks, I sat on the far side of the ring with 

 the interpreter between me and Senor Reyles, I 

 doing the bidding. This went on all right for a while, 

 and some purchases were made. Then when horses 



