in September, 1659 to send a few horses from Holland to the Cape, 

 but since an attempt to Japan had failed they thought it best to 

 give it up.^' This fact is of great importance since Quadekker in 

 his "Het Paarden Boek" holds that "to increase weight and size in 

 the rather small and light Cape Horse, the Netherlands 's govern- 

 ment imported some heavy Dutch horses." The most thorough 

 search for proof of this in other works on the South African horse 

 has failed nor does the Cape Horse in any way show the smallest 

 trace of cold-blooded strains. 



In the meantime horse breeding has developed so successfully 

 in spite of the step-motherly treatment of the Dutch East India 

 Company that in 1665 the first public sale of sixteen horses took 

 place at the average price of about four pounds five shillings each, 

 (about twenty-one dollars) a price that was equal in value to that of 

 five large oxen in prime condition.^** This year, then, marks the 

 time when private farmers first owned horses and when horse breed- 

 ing became a part of their agricultural pursuits. They do not 

 seem to have made a great success of it. Either through neglect in 

 breeding or some other reason, the breed has gone back miich, espee- 

 ' ially in size. This is clearly demonstrated by a government notice 

 of the year 1686;^" "Since the breed of horses of this country has 

 considerably deteriorated every person who uses a horse under the 

 age of three years is liable to a fine of forty rix dollars. 



To rectify this evil the company through tlie exertiojis of tlie 

 good and zealous governor Simon van der Stell imported in 1689 

 some stud horses directly from Persia. "With these importations 

 we come to the close of the seventeenth century and find that horse- 

 breeding has been firmly established. The animals were small yet 

 highly esteemed for their usefulness and though lacking many good 

 points externally they possessed the good qualities of hardiness, en- 

 durance, and excellent constitution and a temperament that com- 

 bined great willingness, docility and steadiness. 



To come back to the breed of these first importations we find 

 that they were put down in the archieves of the colony as "Java 

 horses", and most of the writers who have touched on South Afri- 

 can horse-breeding are satisfied to say that the Cape Horse is de- 

 scended from horses imported from Java and possesses a very strong 

 strain of Persian blood. The Java horse of the early centuries ac- 



(29) George McCall Theal. Eistory and Ethnography of S. A. 1505-1795. 



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