BETSEY RANSOM. 21Y 



rider uses liis hand, but it will not do — Ariel wins the heat by 

 half a neck, in 8m. Is., amidst the cheers of thousands. 



"In half an hour they again started to determine the third 

 and last heat. Betsey had lost her taste for frolicking, and 

 went steadily but rapidly on, with Ariel only a length behind, 

 for three miles and a quarter; here Ariel made a run and 

 j)assed her — taking and keeping the lead by two or three 

 lengths, to the winning post — thus regaining her lost laurels, 

 and proving herself to tliis ' out and outer,' what the best judge 

 in the Union pronounced her — ' a truly formidable race- 

 horse.' * GODOLPHIN." 



Gray filly Betsey Eansom, by Yirginian, October, 1827, 

 on the Union Course, at three yeai'S old, won the Jockey Club 

 purse, four-mile heats, distancing Sir Lovell, Count Piper, Lady 

 riirt,t and Valentine — Stevens' Janet drawn after the first 

 heat — in a most extraordinary manner, the second heat. 'Next 

 week she won the four-mile heats purse, near Baltimore, with 

 great ease ; and tlie week succeeding the same at I^orfolk, at 

 three heats, contending for each, that were won in 7m. 50s. — 

 7m. 45s. and 7m. 50s. — 25s. better than the Eclipse match, but 

 with a difierence of the course — twenty-nine yards short of a 

 mile. She gathered laurels in Yirginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, 

 Maryland and ISTew York — but never won a race after her de- 

 feat by Ariel — she ran but once more, the succeeding spring, in 

 the sweepstakes won by Col. Johnson's Slender, four miles, 

 beating also Black Maria — $1,000 each. 



Tlie next day Ariel's half brother, gray horse Splendid, won 

 with ease the three-mile heats, beating Lady Hunter and an- 

 other in 5m. 58a. and 6m. 2s. At three years old. Splendid had 

 been beat in a match by Col. Johnson's Medley. 



It is somewhat surprising that at this era so many of the 

 first-rate horses should have been gray, and that they should 

 have so frequently contended exclusively with each other, as 

 Ariel, Betsey Eansom, Medley, Splendid, Mark Time, Peggy 

 Madee, and others- also in the south and west. 



* The time, in three contests with Betsey Eansom, on courses better adapted to 

 speed than those at the South, shows that Ariel was "below her mark" — probably 

 considerably " off her foot." 



f Lady Flirt won the first heat, contested by Janet and Count Piper. 



