162 T'be American Thoroughbred 



Sydney hewed down red gum trees (eucalyptus) and cut them into heavy plank for 

 transportation to England. The ship that brought out a load of convicts took back 

 a load of timber and these ships arrived about every four months. Boys who had 

 committed the most trifling offenses, such as would now send them to a House of 

 Correction for about ten days, were put aboard these convict ships and sent out to 

 Australia in the company of murderers, thieves and firebugs ; in fact, the worst 

 criminals that could be found in Shoreditch, Wapping or Whitechapel. Some few with- 

 stood the temptation but most of the lads soon rivaled the older villains in their ras- 

 cality. The few that behaved well were let out on ticket-of-leave and tried to make 

 good citizens of themselves. But the majority were devils and "shapes' hot from 

 Tartarus." 



The few decent and honest men who had gone to farming on the Parametta and 

 other streams (for Hume and Hoddle had not yet discovered the Murray) soon found 

 there was danger in being sober and honest. They could not travel through the dense 

 woods of New South Wales or Van Diemen's Land (as Tasmania was then called) 

 without being attacked either by treacherous savages with boomerangs and spears, or 

 by white bushrangers who had escaped from the penal stockades and would hesitate 

 at nothing in the way of brutality. To show the desperate straits to which they had 

 been driven (owing to the way that their officers had sold provisions intended for feed- 

 ing the prisoners and pocketed the proceeds), I will mention that six convicts stole 

 a bulldog belonging to one of the keepers and decoyed him out to about where the 

 Haymarket now stands. There they killed him and ate him. The keepers came upon 

 them while they were picking the bones and, six days later, every one of these poor 

 devils ended his days on the gallows. Is it any, wonder then that, under the charge 

 of such a monster as Major Merton Fouveaux (who figures in Marcus Clarke's book 

 as Capt. Maurice Frere,") these convicts became as savage as bears and hesitated at 

 no crime known to mortal man. All this is explanatory but to my idea necessary. 



Those colonists who had money enough to send to England for horses, did so ? 

 but many of the poorer ones contented themselves with the purchase of Arabians 

 which began to be shipped in from Ceylon and sold for 12 to 25. But while the 

 Americans were importing such worthless Derby winners as Archduke, Lapdog and 

 horses of that stripe, the Australians imported a totally different type of horses, se- 

 lected in England wholly with a view to endurance and carrying weight, with speed 

 as a third-rate consideration. One of their earliest importations was Toss, by Bourbon 

 (son of Sorcerer and sire of that great mare, Fleur de Lis) out of Tramp's dam by 

 Gohanna. They imported five sons of Melbourne, the heaviest-boned horse in Eng- 

 land or anywhere else. Collingwood, by Sheet Anchor out of Kalmia by Magistrate, 

 won the Royal Hunt Cup at Ascot in 1845 ; and as he was a very heavy-boned horse 

 himself and transmitted his heavy timber to most of his progeny, there were no fewer 

 than seven sons of Collingwood imported into the colonies. Another good-boned horse 

 imported just before these Collingwood horses was Aether, by St. Patrick out of Pas- 

 tille (Oaks and 2000 guineas of 1822) by Rubens. Aether ran a dead heat for the Grand 

 Duke Michael Stakes of 1839 with Euclid, who did the same thing with Charles XII 

 in the St. Leger of that same year. Two sons of Aether were imported to California 

 in 1852, one by J. Cooper Turner and the other by Capt. 1. G. B. Isham, of San Diego. 

 Mr. Turner's horse was called Chloroform and was sold to Capt. C. M. Weber, of 

 Stockton. He is to be found in the pedigrees of several 2 :y> trotters. The great long- 

 distance runner, Black Swan, was also by Aether and came over in the same ship 

 with Chloroform and Young Muley, he being by Muleyson, a son of English Muley. 

 Black Swan became the property of Don Ygnacio Sepulveda, of Los Angeles, whose 

 daughter married Thos. D. Mott, now less than one year dead. Col. Mott matched 

 Black Swan to run six miles against the Mexican horse, Sarco, who was a brown 

 gelding about fourteen hands high but very heavily built. The wager was six thousand 



