Whence the American Thoroughbred 3 



Back yonder, so far as there is record, or even 

 tradition, to tell of a race-horse in America, there 

 is mention, which has been credited as true men- 

 tion, of the importation to this country of a 

 stallion called Bulle Rock. In the American 

 Stud Book, which is that authority to which we 

 must all refer, you may find the name Bulle Rock 

 as given to a horse foaled in England in 17 18, 

 and imported into Virginia in 1730. So early 

 was his birth in Albion, that neither the Stud 

 Book nor Racing Calendar in that country had 

 been established, and the records of exportations 

 from there were as unreliable and as fragmentary 

 as those of importations to this country. 



But, from the old advertisements in the very 

 early Virginia papers, we know that this horse 

 called Bulle Rock, by the Darley Arabian, first 

 dam by Byerly Turk, was owned by Samuel 

 Patton and Samuel Gist, of Virginia, and that he 

 was spoken of in the small prints of his time as 

 being a horse of the best English (or Arabian) 

 racing family, and that it was hoped the gentle- 

 men of Virginia would seek opportunity, through 

 him, of improving their general stock. 



There is no way of establishing the fact that 

 previous to the coming of Bulle Rock any race- 



