Whence the American Thoroughbred 5 



aristocratic indeed. Of his personality there is 

 not even a shadow. He is to us now only the first 

 race-horse to come. And on far occasion we find 

 in an old pedigree, at its very American remote- 

 ness, " This horse was by Bulle Rock." 



The first race-horse of America landed on Vir- 

 ginia soil. For many, many years thereafter every 

 race-horse that came to this country landed at the 

 ports of Virginia or the Carolinas. Many men, 

 studying the histoiy of the race-horse of America, 

 have wondered that he should have been, in his 

 importation, so purely local, — why he did not dis- 

 embark in old Boston, or even on the coast of 

 Maine, or at the Battery. There is plain reason 

 for that in the types of the men who were coming 

 from other lands to make this new country under 

 a new flag. The masters of Virginia and of the 

 Carolinas were the cavaliers of old England. 

 They were men of the horse and the sword at 

 home. Long military training had taught them 

 that a man well horsed had his battle half won. 

 So it was the most natural thing in the world that, 

 coming to the conquest of a new land, the man 

 who had been swift-mounted in his own land upon 

 a horse capable of carrying him at great speed and 

 of maintaining such speed under difficulties for 



