repeated its visitation in 1763 and caused tremendous havoc amongst 

 horse life ; the farmers losing within a couple of months over two 

 thousand five hundred horses. These deplorable events, however, 

 were followed by a more favorable one. In 1769 the first batch of 

 remounts for the Indian army were exported and became a fore- 

 runner of a great and prosperous trade. *^ 



The nineteenth century is remarkable in regard to horse-breed- 

 ing in so far as within its decades horse breeding reached its highest 

 point of development and also its deplorable decline and deterior- 

 ation. Towards the end of the nineteenth century the colonists be- 

 came filled with the desire of possessing pedigree horses, and some 

 of the meanest "blood weeds" of the Thoroughbred stock found 

 their way to some of the best studs in the colony. The wool sheep 

 farming, ostrich farming, gold and diamond mines were found more 

 lucrative occupations and investments and the serviceable and high- 

 ly efficient Cape Horse had to give way and was readily neglected. 

 These are in short some of the reasons of deterioration of horse 

 breeding in South Africa and we will refer to them more fully later 

 on in this chapter. 



In March, 1807, during the Napoleonic wars two French vessels 

 were captured containing some Spanish breeding horses en route 

 to Buenos Aires. "It is from these that we derived the blue and 

 red roans so valuable for their great powers of endurance."*^ 

 Liehtenstein*'' a contemporaneous writer and explorer describes their 

 progeny as "a kind of bluish grey (blau und grau schimmels) col- 

 ored horse, of medium height with extraordinary broad breast, em- 

 inently suited for carriage horses. ' ' 



Another reference to this infusion of Spanish blood is found in 

 the Live Stock Journal No. 2 on Light Horses.^* The Earl of 

 Newcastle forgetful or ignorant of the fact that Arab, Persian, and 

 even Thoroughbred blood went to establish the Cape Horse, holds 

 forth that the ancestors of the Cape Horse came from Spain. He, 

 however, expounds on the good qualities of the Spanish horse of 

 the eighteenth century. ' ' The Barb ' ', writes this authority, ' ' were 

 the lords of the horse tribe, but the Spanish horses were the princes, ' ' 



(41) McCall Theal "History of South Africa," 165^-1795. 



(42) George McCall Theal "History of South Africa", since 1705. 



(43) Heinrich Lichtenstein " Beisen in Sudlichen Afrilca." 1811. 



(44) Live Stock Journal No. S "Light Horses — Breeds and Management." 



1907 — London- 



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