/7<5 'The American Thoroughbred 



finished in front of him. Now if a man wants to "throw off" a horse, so as to get a 

 lighter weight upon him, it would be very easy to weigh in with the proper 

 weight and then slip in eight or ten pounds extra when saddling up. He 

 would make no attempt to win but would finish "in the steerage ;" and the fraud would 

 not be detected till odds of 20 to i were bet against him in some future race, and 

 then he would "come home on the bit." It may be, however, that this custom pertains 

 only to the more important events; and that, in all the smaller events, every horse is 

 weighed out, as in America. I have only seen racing for stake events and what I 

 have said above may be a gross error as to smaller meetings and less important races. 



For one thing the Australian people deserve credit and that is the drastic and 

 wholesome way in which the English love of fair play is enforced on their tracks, and 

 to my notion with an intensified degree of severity. Want of space compels me to 

 restrict myself to one example. At the Great Metropolitan meeting of 1888 at Sydney 

 there was a mare entered named The Nun, by First King out of Pilgrimage. She 

 was in with a fairly lightweight and could have won the race which was won by an 

 ugly brute named Lamond. It was very evident that she had "got the rope" in the 

 hope of "making a big killing" with her in the Caulfield Cup, about four weeks off. 

 The fraud was easily detected and the stewards of the A. J. C. ruled off her owner, 

 Mr. McKenzie, for life ; her trainer, I think his name was Dowd, for fifteen years ; and 

 her rider, Chris Moore, for five years. Moore claimed he had "ridden to orders" 

 and, as he was a boy of previous good character, the ban was lifted at the end of four 

 years, after which I met him in San Francisco. The trainer got back at the end of 

 nine years, but the owner is still outside the rails and the ticket officers have his pho- 

 tograph on all the principal courses to warn the clubs against selling him a card of 

 admission. That is the correct way, too. Let 'the heaviest punishment fall upon 

 him who furnishes the money for jobbery and there will not be so many jobs at- 

 tempted. 



The population of Australia is a rugged and healthy one, through plenty of out- 

 door life and a manly love for honest labor. The regiment which was fitted out at 

 Sydney by William Bede Dalley, to go to the relief of "Chinese Gordon" at Khartoum, 

 was the most magnificent body of cavalry that ever leaped into saddles, to answer a 

 bugle-call, since the hand of man was first raised against his fellow man in warfare. 

 They are a kind-hearted people, too, as witness the generous sum of money they heaped 

 up for the widow and children of little Tommy Corrigan, the steeple-chase jockey 

 who was killeu at Flemington about eight years ago. Moreover, they are a hospitable 

 people, as were the Californians of pioneer days, before the transcontinental railways 

 were built. That hospitality is the outgrowth of isolation and as Australia is 7,500 

 miles from San Francisco and more than twice that distance from London, I think 

 the day will never come when the Australians will be other than a generous and open- 

 handed people. It is the same with all classes. The wool king offers you his cham- 

 pagne and roast pheasant with the same cordiality that the woodchopper, a thousand 

 miles from no place, invites you to his frugal repast of mutton and "damper." It is 

 the custom of the country and they have no desire to change it. 



I never again expect to hear the Victorians say : "Well, how do you find Melbourne 

 isn't its growth something marvelous?" Nor to hear the Sydney man's stereo- 

 typed query, "What do you think of our beautiful harbor?" (I have always pitied 

 Captain Cook because there was nobody to ask him that question when he landed at 

 the present site of the Circular Quay.) But my heart goes back to many brilliantly- 

 lighted evenings in Melbourne and many sunny days in New South Wales; and for 

 the sake of those days that can never return I pray that there may be always a rose 

 looking into every onen window in that fair land of perennial liberty and light. 



