The Darley Arabian. 227 



dnct, and the rich bay Whisker was the first of the 

 Southern cracks who was sent North, and pitched his 

 tent near Catterick. The racing circuits too had Httle 

 to do with each other : and there must have been a 

 v'ery great end in view, to tempt the horses off the 

 one to Epsom, or off the other, across the Trent to 

 York or Doncaster. Many Northern men never came 

 farther south than Newmarket, which they reached by 

 a weary post, or jolt with their saddle-bags, through 

 the fens of Lincolnshire and the Isle Ely ; and one of 

 them, a Mr. Cornforth, who performed that journey 

 regularly three times a year, for nearly half a century, 

 had not even once the curiosity to ride on to London. 

 When they did get Whisker there, the Yorkshire and 

 Durham men, led by the Duke of Cleveland, dipped 

 pretty deeply into him ; and he left The Colonel for 

 Mr. Petre, Memnon for Mr. Watt, and Emma for Mr. 

 Bowes. Whisker was as near perfection in look as 

 anything could be, with the exception of being a little 

 calf-knee'd , and he seemed equally likely to get a racer, 

 hunter, machiner, or hack. If a departed horse-dealer 

 had seen him he would have once mors dictated to 

 his daughter as she sat, pen in hand, " The shadow of 

 hirn on the vail is vorth all the money I axes ; he can 

 pick up his fut and go and catch a bird." 



The Duke of Leeds loved his blood even more than 

 Shuttle's, and Tom Pierse and his father Billy Pierse 

 thought Swiss (who was out of a Shuttle mare, and 

 savaged his boy so severely in the Belle Isle paddock, 

 that his leg had to be taken off), one of the very best 

 two-year-olds he ever trained. The Whisker blood 

 has descended through The Colonel and Chatham in 

 the male line, to Woolwich, who, considering his jady 

 sire and Actaeon dam, was a perfect wonder for a 

 distance ; and through Economist, to Harkaway and 

 King Tom. It was always Mr. Herring's habit to 

 submit his St. Leger sketch of St. Leger winners to 

 His Majesty through Jack Ratford. When The 



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