American thoroughbred 



greatest campaigner ever foaled in America. Several others will be dealt with in a 

 like manner, and no effort made towards screening any malefactors in this direction. 

 From the above may be gleaned the fact that we imported winners of the Derby, 

 of the St. Leger and of the Two Thousand Guineas, nearly all of whom turned out 

 worthless. Glencoe was worth the whole bunch, and Margrave was certainly worth 

 at least one-half of them. Trustee, who ran second to St. Giles in the Derby of 1832 

 and beat Margrave in the Claret Stakes of the year following, was worth all the 

 Derby winners ever imported, except St. Blaise ; and all the St. Leger winners, barring 

 Margrave and Don John, the latter of whom died before making a season. Look 

 over the list of importations into Australia and you will find that they never imported 

 a Derby winner at all, only one of the St. Leger and two winners of the Two Thousand 

 Guineas; and it is a grave doubt if we ever bred as good a horse as Grand Flaneur 

 or Carbine, to say nothing of the honest little Chester, who started in 41 races, won 

 19 and was only four times outside the money. My idea is that, in the importation 

 of winners of classic races, our English brethren contributed largely to our education 

 in metallurgy by handing us a good many large-sized gold bricks. Sir Harry was one 

 of these Derby winners, and I can only find him in the pedigree of Wild Dayrell 

 (Derby of 1855) and of Diamond Jubilee and Persimmon, nearly fifty years later. For 

 horses of the intervening generations of that line I would not give forty dollars apiece. 

 Then there were two full brothers, Archduke and Paris, both by the truly great Sir 

 Peter, both Derby winners and each about fit to stand the season for a barrel of corn 

 and on the cob at that while their full brother, Stamford, of no reputation as a 

 turf horse, was one of the greatest of broodmare sires up to 1820. Priam, who won 

 the Derby of 1830 and the Goodwood Cup of 1832 with 139 pounds, was a different 

 sort of animal, for he got three winners of the Oaks in his first four seasons (showing 

 conclusively that his daughters were of more account than his sons) a stud feat 

 equalled only a half-century later by the unrivalled St. Simon. He also got Dey of 

 Algiers, winner of the Chester Cup, and Illiona, who won the Cesarewitch. Imported 

 Monarch, whom he got from Delphine (almost a sister to The Colonel, St. Leger, 

 1828) before leaving England, was not to be included in his American progeny, all 

 of which were very badly knee-tied and very difficult to train on account of their 

 having big bodies and light legs. It took a half century of breeding to short-legged 

 and substantial horses like Boston, Lexington, Lecompte and their type of horses, to 

 eradicate the structural defects inflicted upon the American thoroughbred horse by 

 the importation of this self-same gallant, speedy but outrageously-built Priam. Come 

 out to California and I will show you his replica the Emperor of Norfolk, the most 

 magnificent horse, above his hocks and knees, that a man could ask to see. Grand 

 Flaneur, in Australia, resembled him more than any horse I ever saw, but he had 

 good legs and a great pedigree, while the Emperor of Norfolk comes from a line of 

 mares that never had yet produced as good as a third-class sire. And he is the Priam 

 of America the only horse that ever carried off all three of the annual fixed events, 

 for his age, at Chicago the Derby, Sheridan and Drexel and, probably, the only 

 horse that ever will. Take it home to your heart, student of these pages, and remember 

 what the Honorable James White, of Australia, told me sixteen years ago, "My Deal- 

 Sir, a breeder's path is full of thorns. We breed great race horses every year of our 

 lives, but we breed sires about three times a century." 



Hence I am frank to say that the Australians who, prior to 1860, bred merely for 

 substance and bone, ignoring previous performances on the part of their imported 

 stallions, have bred wiser than we. Outside of St. Blaise and Diomed, our Derby 

 winners were absolutely worthless, while Margrave is about the only St. Leger winner 

 whose name can, today, be found in the tabulations of any distinguished American 

 performers. Glencoe, a Two Thousand Guineas winner and unable to reach better 

 than third place in the Derby (to Plenipo and Shillalagh) was worth all the Derby 



