The ^ustro" Hungarian 



Thoroughbred 



The Empire of Austria, with Hungary attached thereto since 1849, must bear 

 about the same relation to England as California does to the Atlantic seaboard, being 

 a much warmer and drier climate, thereby enabling horses to acquire as much growth 

 and substance at twenty months as the English colt does in twenty-four, with better 

 lung-power. The Hungarians have been using the thoroughbred sire for their cavalry 

 horses for nearly a century, but breeding for the turf, as a natural consequence of the 

 establishment of race-courses at Vienna, Buda-Pesth, Warsaw and Prague, is of 

 comparatively recent origin. For while fifty years may be a long time in the life of 

 the individual man, it is a short one in the history of a nation. The first intimation 

 I ever had that they had racing in that part of the world was from the late Mr. 

 Richard Ten Broeck in 1862, when I wrote him in behalf of William M. Williamson, 

 of San Jose, to know if Starke, who had won the Goodwood Cup and Bentinck Me- 

 morial of the year previous, was for sale and, if so, at what price ? In reply I received 

 a letter accompanied by a lithographic portrait of Starke with Fordham in the saddle 

 and Ben Pryor holding him by the bridle ; and in that letter he informed me that 

 Starke (by Wagner-Reel) had broken down and he had sold him for $8,000 to the 

 Austrian Government. Several years later, I heard that a Derby race had been inaug- 

 urated at Vienna, subject to the same conditions as the English event of the same 

 name ; and that it had been won by a horse called Wissenrahd and that the American 

 stallion, Starke, was his sire. 



Since then the Hungarians and Austrians have been big buyers of English horses 

 at the Tattersall sales, every year, and have occasionally secured big bargains by taking 

 what the English doctrinaires have rejected, a good deal in the same way as the 

 Australians secured Panic and Fisherman, and the Americans got hold of grand old 

 Leamington. In this way they managed to pick up two great sires : 



BUCCANEER, foaled in 1857, by Wild Dayrell (Derby 1855) out of Cruiser's dam 

 by Little Red Rover (2nd in Derby 1830) from Eclat by Edmond, son of Orville. 



CAMBUSCAN, b. h. 1861, by Newminster, out of The Arrow by Slane (son of Royal 

 Oak) from South Down (dam of Alarm, winner of Cambridgeshire and Ascot Cup) by 

 Defence, son of the great Whalebone. 



I don't know what other prominent horses they bought from time to time from 

 the English and the French, but I do know that they got two good ones in the stallions 

 just above mentioned. Buccaneer, who was a rank "quitter" but with the speed of a 



