CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE ORLOFF TROTTER, BELLFOUNDER, AND THE ENGLISH HACKNEY.

Orloffs the only foreign trotters of merit—Count Alexis Orloff, founder of the breed—Origin of the Orloff—Count Orloff began breeding in 1770—Smetanka, Polkan, and Polkan’s son, Barss, really the first Orloff trotting sire—The Russian pacers—Their great speed—Imported Bellfounder—His history and characteristics—Got little speed—His descendants—The English Hackney—Not a breed, but a mere type—The old Norfolk trotters—Hackney experiments in America—Superiority of the trotting-bred horse demonstrated in show-ring contests.

It may be a little outside of the field of our discussion to include the Orloff Trotter, but as a few of them have been brought to this country, and as that is the only organized and recognized _breed_ of trotters in all the world beside our own, it seems to be necessary to give a brief synopsis of the origin and history of that breed, so far as we may be able. An additional and probably a more cogent reason for making this foreign detour is the fact that there are now many American trotters on the turf in Europe, and practically their only competitors, whether on the turf or in the breeding studs, are the Orloffs of Russia.

“Wallace’s American Trotting Register,” the first volume of which was issued in 1871, was an individual enterprise. Two years afterward the director-in-chief of the Russian Imperial Studs submitted a series of questions to different scientific gentlemen, whose studies were in the right direction, soliciting their views, on the practicability and advisability of establishing a governmental standard by which the Orloff trotters should be classed and officially registered. The report was favorable and the Russian trotting register was established under governmental direction. This was the second movement toward establishing a _breed_; not merely by writing a lot of names in a book, but by writing those names on the turf of two continents. A delegation from France once visited me to consult about establishing a Register in that country, and to learn how to commence such an enterprise. When I asked them what strains of blood they had that could trot, they did not seem to know of any particular strains, or any one strain better than another, to serve as a foundation, but they were sure they had plenty of trotters. This was the first I ever had heard of French-bred trotters, and it was the last I ever heard of the French trotting register.

The stalwart Alexis Orloff took a very active part in making Catherine II. Empress of Russia—for which he was loaded with honors as well as lucrative offices. In the war with the Turks in 1772 he was given command of the Russian fleet, and with the assistance of the English fleet under Admiral Elphinstone, he achieved a great victory and captured the pasha in command of the Turkish fleet. Owing to some unusual kindness Count Orloff was able to extend to the captured Turkish commander, or his family, he presented the count with a pure white stallion, said to be a Barb, which he took home with him and placed in his stud of horses, that he had established but a short time before. Another story is that the count bought this white horse, which he called Smetanka, while he was in Greece and paid a large price for him. I am not able to say which representation is the more probable, and it is not material to our history, as there is no dispute about the identity of Smetanka as the nominal head of the Orloff breed of horses, and neither story gives any information about his blood. No doubt he was a Turk. Count Alexis commenced his breeding stud in 1770, and there appears to have been a good deal of system about it or else a large amount of very free guessing. When first established, the horse breeders say, it consisted of stallions and mares as follows: Arabs, 12 stallions, 10 mares; Turkish, 1 stallion, 2 mares; English, 20 stallions, 32 mares; Dutch, 1 stallion, 8 mares; Persian, 3 stallions, 2 mares; Danish, 1 stallion, 3 mares; Mecklenburg, 1 stallion, 5 mares. From this it will be seen that he had more English running blood than all the other varieties put together, and yet no trotters came from that source. From this great variety of composite material the count had free rein in his grand experiment of producing the type of horse that best pleased his fancy. As a matter of course the indiscriminate commingling of these different strains and types would produce a mongrel lot, from which a few superior animals might be selected, and doubtless were selected, for breeding purposes.

The different writers who have discussed the result of this experiment seem to agree, substantially, that two distinct types were the result—the galloper for the saddle and the trotter for harness—but they assume what appears to me to be a very unreasonable conclusion that both these types were indebted to the super-excellence of Smetanka. The count was one of the most prominent sporting men of his day, an inveterate horse-racer and cock-fighter, and under this kind of management it is hardly credible that the twenty English thoroughbred stallions should have been put aside for the little white horse of positively unknown origin. But whatever may have been the predominating blood in the saddle department, it is certain that the trotter is lineally descended from Smetanka. He was bred on a Danish mare and produced Polkan (Volcan), without anything new or striking in his characteristics. Polkan was bred on a Dutch mare and produced Barss, and this was the first to manifest a disposition to extend himself to his utmost at the trot and to stick to it. Barss became a great favorite with his master; for, although stumbled upon, he was a new creation and is the real progenitor of all the horses that bear the name Orloff. His component elements are easily expressed. He had twenty-five per cent. of the blood of Smetanka; twenty-five per cent. of the blood of the Danish mare, and fifty per cent. of the blood of the Dutch mare, it seems to be reasonable to conclude, therefore, that the trotting instinct must be found in the unknown elements of the Dutch mare.

Some years ago Prof. —— (the name I cannot now recall), from the Imperial Agricultural College, near Moscow, Russia, paid me several visits for the purpose of gathering up what information he could obtain about the origin and history of the American Trotter. He was very intelligent and thorough in his methods of obtaining information, and each succeeding day he came back to me with a new series of questions hinging upon previous interviews, and all carefully prepared. These questions were so admirably shaped to reach the vital points of the subject that I became greatly interested in the man. When it came my turn to ask questions, my first one was, What was the origin and lineage of the Dutch mare that produced Barss? He replied, “Ah, the scientific men of Russia would give a great deal to be able to answer that question.” We both agreed, perfectly, that the living instinct of the trotter came from that mare, but he was not able to tell me anything of her history or habits of action. He told me there were many pacers in Russia and that the best ones came from the province of Viatka and from the region of the Volga River.

As the true source from which the Russian trotters have drawn their ability to trot fast has not been developed nor determined by history, we must consider the problem in the light of the surrounding conditions, and possibly our American experiences may lead to its solution. In 1873 Prof. Von Mittendorf, at the request of the director-in-chief of the imperial stud, prepared a very able paper on the scientific questions involved in the establishment of a Government Register for the Orloff trotters. In this paper he discusses the pace and the trot as both original and natural gaits and insists that there are no outward indications in form or shape by which the animal, when at rest, can be decided to be a pacer or a trotter. In his own words he says:

“In answer to the question whether, from the form of a horse at rest, it can be ascertained what gait would be easiest assumed by it, viz., trotting or pacing, I must confess that I have never seen, read or heard of such marks, and, indeed, there never are any symptoms or signs of inclination for pacing in the proportions of any horse with the single negative exception, viz., that great speed in one-sided motion does not agree with a large frame, which is more adapted to leaping, and hence fast pacers are never found among large horses.”

This is the view as taken by a Russian scientist of the distinction, or rather lack of distinction, between the trotter and the pacer. I have not quoted this paragraph from Prof. Mittendorf because it contained anything new in the economy of breeding, but to prove that there were pacers in Russia and that their relation to the trotter was considered in the formation of the rules of admission to the Orloff trotting register. A very intelligent writer, evidently a Russian and one who knew what he was talking about, contributed an interesting article to the New York _Sun_ of July 9, 1877, from which we get a clear and strong light on the practical side of the Russian pacer, and I will here again quote:

“Up to the middle of the last century horses in Russia were not scientifically bred; they ran wild in many parts of the country. Those caught on the steppes of the river Don, and in the wilderness of the district of Viatka, obtained early celebrity, which they still maintain. The Don horses are those famous Cossack steeds about which so much has been written of late. The Viatka horses, or Bitugues, as they are called are the genuine trotters of Russia. They are all pacers, equally remarkable for their speed and their endurance. But since the Orloff breed has been introduced, the Bitugues have been excluded from all matches, on the ground that their pacing is not orthodox.

“It is with these Bitugues that the peculiar troika team, of which a specimen was shown in Fleetwood Park, on Saturday, originated. A fast, sturdy Bitugue is put in shafts, and a light running horse from the steppes harnessed on each side of him. A good Bitugue trots so fast that the wild steppe runners have to be whipped all the time to force them to keep up with him. The idea of putting an Orloff trotter in the place of a Bitugue is very queer, as no square trotter can equal the speed of those famous pacers of Viatka, and keep abreast with side runners.”

From these three several sources we learn a number of facts that may have a more or less important bearing upon the true origin of the Orloff trotter. (1) That there are now, and have been for generations past, plenty of pacers in Russia. (2) That these pacers have a common habitat, north and east of the Don. (3) That they are a very old race, running back in the centuries away beyond the knowledge of man or the records of history. (4) That they are a very fast and very enduring race, and that they have been trained for generations as the shaft horses of the troika and their speed so well developed as to require good running horses to keep abreast with them. (5) That they are of smaller size than the average and lack symmetry, and thus, notwithstanding their great speed and bottom, they and their blood are excluded from registration with the Orloffs. (6) That they are also excluded from competing for any prizes that may be offered, and no other reason is suggested than that they would be sure to win.

Russia and America both have pacers and they are both carrying forward the breeding and development of the trotter with great intelligence and success. No other nation has been able to make even a beginning in this field of animal economy except by the introduction of the foundation stock from one or other of these two countries. It may be taken as historically true, and as applying to every nation on the face of the earth, that where there are no pacers there are no trotters. Hundreds of unmistakable experiences in this country go to show that the pacer is a great source of trotting speed. At one time a pacing stallion of obscure pacing origin stood at the head of the list of all stallions as the sire of the greatest number of trotters with fast records. A great multitude of our fastest trotters at maturity were foaled pacers from trotting parents. It is no longer a matter of wonder or surprise that with two animals from the same parents one of them should be a fast trotter and the other a fast pacer. Neither is it any longer remarkable that a fast trotter with a very fast record should turn around and make just as fast a record at the pace. The American people are just beginning to realize, in its full force, the declaration of more than twenty years ago; that the trot and the pace are simply two forms of the same gait, in the economy of motion. The only difference that has been observed as between two brothers, the one a pacer and the other a trotter, is that with the same skill in handling the pacer will come to his speed much quicker than the trotter, which is of itself a strong suggestion at least that the pace is the more natural and easier form of the one gait.

Now, in view of the fact that Smetanka was of Saracenic origin—a strain of blood that has always been antagonistic to the pacer, and never produced a pacer or a trotter; and in view of the fact that his grandson, Barss, is accepted as the first of all Orloff trotters; and in view of the further fact that in thousands of American experiences the trotter has come from the pacer, it seems to be a reasonable conclusion that the “Dutch Mare” that produced Barss had a strong pacing inheritance, and possibly had her speed fully developed, as the Bitugue in the count’s own team.

Among all the pleasures which Count Orloff derived from his experiments in breeding, whether of gamecocks, or race horses, or saddlers, or trotters, Barss was his greatest favorite because he was his highest achievement in the art of breeding. This judgment of his master has been confirmed in the experiences and history of all succeeding generations for a hundred years, and the name of Barss will be known through the coming centuries as the founder of a mighty breed of trotters. I once possessed a fine picture of Barss hitched to a sleigh and driven by his breeder, Count Orloff, himself; and I have seen it stated somewhere that this picture was a copy of a bronze statue erected to the memory of the Count Orloff and the greatest horse of Russia.

It has been stated by some writers, but with what measure of authority I do not know, that for about thirty years after the appearance of Barss his daughters were bred to English thoroughbreds, to Arabs, to Anglo-Arabs, and, indeed, to all the highly bred crosses that the great establishment was able to furnish, and there was no improvement in either the quality or the speed of the produce. From this it is evident that the count and his managers were at that period entangled in the same foolish notions that befogged the minds of so many very worthy gentlemen in this country some years ago, viz., that the way to improve the trotter was to go to the runner—the horse that never could trot. This foolish notion, that never had a spark of reason in it, naturally and necessarily weakened the trotting instinct of the descendants of Barss, and would have wiped it all out if it had been followed persistently, and there would have been no Orloff trotters to-day.

After this narrow escape from the annihilation of much of the good that Barss had done, the management then began to look for the same blood and the same habit of action that the “Dutch Mare” transmitted to her son, and, with this element to the front, progression was resumed. Out of his great variety of forms and of strains of blood the count and his managers could pick and choose for the size, shape and forms they wanted, but they were not able to transfer with the size, shape and form the instincts and psychical nature of the horse. The count seems to have carried forward his great enterprise rather with a view to experimentation than its commercial possibilities. Smetanka lived but a year or two, and when he stumbled upon the production of Barss, a magnificent individual and a great trotter, his head seems to have been turned, as he evidently supposed that he could breed any kind of horse he wished to breed, and be able to do anything he wished him to do. At his death, in 1808, he left no male heir to succeed him, but he provided in his will that his stud should not be dispersed. It was kept intact till about 1845, when it was purchased by the government, and finally divided among a number of prominent breeders in different portions of the empire.

Without having any knowledge on the subject that is definite and specific, I am led to infer that the rules on registration and racing in Russia are a hindrance to the breeding and development of the trotter. As I understand it, no horse can be registered unless he is purely descended from Barss. And I understand further, that he must possess the same requirements in order to enter and start in a public race against the Orloffs. If it be true that these restrictions are really in existence and are enforced, we can understand why the American trotter is so far ahead of the Orloff in speed and in the markets of Europe. The Orloff is restricted to certain lines of blood and is protected against competition from others that might beat him. The American is free from all restrictions of blood and gathers up all that is best and fastest. He neither asks nor accepts protection from any quarter, but throws down the glove to all comers.

BELLFOUNDER was imported from England, July, 1822, by James Boott, of Boston, Mass. He was placed in the hands of Samuel Jaques, Jr.—a very shrewd manager who understood the use of printer’s ink and did not hesitate about employing it liberally. In his advertisement for 1823 he says: “This celebrated horse is a bright bay with black legs, standing fifteen hands high.” From this we are safe in concluding he was not more than fifteen hands, and from another contemporaneous source it is learned that he was a little below that measurement. On this point the recollections, or perhaps impressions, of Orange County horsemen are not very trustworthy, as one of them places his height at sixteen hands and others at fifteen and a half. His pedigree was given on the card which was distributed by his groom in the form following: “Got by old Bellfounder, out of Velocity by Haphazard, by Sir Peter out of Miss Hervey by Eclipse.” “Velocity trotted on the Norwich road in 1806, sixteen miles in one hour, and although she broke five times into a gallop, and as often turned round, she won her match.” Although after diligent search I have not been able to find this performance of Velocity, it may be true that a mare so named may have trotted as represented, but she was not a daughter of Haphazard. The dates make this utterly impossible, and Mr. Jaques was smart enough never to put this humbug pedigree in his elaborate advertisements that appeared in the leading agricultural papers of the country, year after year.

As the great mass of people of that day knew nothing and cared but little about pedigrees, the astute manager of the horse struck an expedient in the way of advertising that was very effective. He had a cut made of a horse trotting loose on the road, at the rate of a hurricane, and in the background was an entablature with the legend “Seventeen and a half miles an hour,” which anybody and everybody would interpret to mean that this was a record made by imported Bellfounder, and there he was doing it. This cut in reduced form went the rounds of the agricultural press, and in 1831 made its appearance in the “Family Encyclopedia of Useful Knowledge.” This dodge was exceedingly effective, and as it appeared in a book it must be true. Thousands of people interpreted the picture to mean that imported Bellfounder had trotted seventeen and a half miles in an hour. Mr. Jaques did not say this in letters and figures, but he said it even more plainly in a picture. The basis of this deception is found in the advertisement itself, where, in speaking of the speed of old Bellfounder in England, he says: “His owner challenged to perform with him seventeen miles and a half in one hour, but it was not accepted.” Here we have a possible challenge of the sire transmuted into an actual performance of the son, for the sole purpose of securing public patronage.

There can be no doubt that this horse was a true representative of what was then known as the Norfolk Trotters and at this time designated as Hackneys or Cobs. Bellfounder was of a quiet, docile disposition, with a display of great nervous energy in his movements when aroused. His knee and hock action was high and showy, giving the impression of a great trotter, without much speed. At several points his form was measurably reproduced in Hambletonian, especially in his low, round withers and his great, meaty buttocks. In seeing these points so plainly developed in his idol it is not remarkable that Mr. Rysdyk should have placed too high an estimate on Bellfounder blood as a factor in the American trotting horse. If he had thoughtfully asked himself the question, What has Bellfounder blood done in its own right in the way of getting trotters? the illusion would have vanished.

Bellfounder was in the control of Mr. Jaques for six years, and never in my knowledge of trotting stallions have I known one so widely and successfully advertised. The name “Bellfounder” was heard and known everywhere. From 1829 to 1833, inclusive, he was under the control of Mr. T. T. Kissam, of Long Island. After that time he seems to have gone “a-begging” wherever there seemed to be a chance to earn his oats. At last, at Jamaica, Long Island, he died, having made twenty-one seasons in this country—one more than Messenger. The question was once raised as to where Hambletonian got his aversion to the chestnut color, and it was flippantly assigned to Bellfounder. The truth is, quite a number of Bellfounder’s get were chestnuts, perhaps as large a percentage as would naturally come from the average stallion.

It is the testimony of several gentlemen who were familiar with trotting affairs in the time of the Bellfounders, that a number of them were skillfully and persistently trained and none of them could trot faster than about 2:50. The one exception to this fact so widely established is the case of the dam of Hambletonian. After this filly passed into the hands of Peter Seely he gave some attention irregularly to the development of her speed, and before he sold her he gave her two trials to saddle on the Union Course and she trotted in 2:43 and 2:41. As she was then but four years old it is safe to conclude that she would have made a trotter, beyond all doubt. This is the only one, old or young, from the loins of Bellfounder that ever trotted so fast. I once put the question directly to Mr. Rysdyk as to whether the Kent Mare was as good and as fast as her dam, One Eye, and he promptly replied that One Eye was much the faster and greater mare. To this answer he added that One Eye, under the same circumstances, would have been the equal of Lady Thorn or any other that ever lived. This may account for the superiority of the Kent Mare over all the other Bellfounders, and it may account for the superiority of Hambletonian over all other stallions.

BELLFOUNDER (BROWN’S OR KISSAM’S), was a bay horse, foaled 1830, got by imported Bellfounder; dam Lady Alport, by Mambrino, son of Messenger; grandam by Tippoo, son of Messenger; great-grandam by imported Messenger. With such breeding he should have been a great horse. He was bred by Timothy T. Kissam, of Long Island, and sold along with a full brother one year younger, named Bellport, about 1834-5, to L. F. and A. B. Allen, of Buffalo, New York. Bellfounder was a bay horse, sixteen hands high, and Bellport was sixteen and one-half hands, but was poisoned and died at four years old. Bellfounder passed into the hands of some parties at Cleveland and then to Mr. Brown, of Columbus, Ohio, made most of his seasons in that portion of the State, and died September, 1860. This was altogether the most valuable son the imported horse left—indeed the only one that made any mark in the world. He was not much of a trotter and did not get trotters, but got colts that were excellent types of the coach horse, and for that purpose was very highly esteemed. Some of his sons and daughters, especially the latter, are met with sometimes in trotting records as having produced something that had more or less speed.

CONQUEROR was a bay gelding, foaled 1842, and got by La Tourrett’s Bellfounder, a grandson of the imported horse, and out of Lady McClain by imported Bellfounder, and she out of Lady Webber by Mambrino, and she out of a mare brought from Dutchess County and represented to be a daughter of imported Messenger. This gelding had been pounded about in slow races for years and had the reputation of being a stayer. In 1853 a match was made with him to trot a hundred miles in nine hours. The race was started and the horse won in 8h. 55m. and 53s., and he died three or four days afterward. This is the only instance that I know of in which the advocates of Hackney blood can point to a trotting record made in this or indeed in any other country.

In closing the account of this family—for out of courtesy we have called it a “family”—we find we have nothing left but a name with nothing in it. The name that was more widely known than that of any other horse of his generation has now practically ceased from the earth, with nobody so poor as to do it reverence.

The type of horse now known as the “Hackney” is found chiefly in the shires bordering the northeastern coast of England—Norfolk, Lincoln and Yorkshire. The name now given is not only new but it is appropriate and applies to any one part of England as well as another, and applies to any one horse, suited to the general use of a Hack, as well as another, no difference what his blood or what his country. The name “Norfolk Trotter” fifty or a hundred years ago was often applied to horses of this type coming from that part of the country, but it did not follow that they were “trotters.” In the discussions of the association preceding the adoption of a name it was urged that the qualifying word “trotter” would imply the ability to trot fast, and as the material to be registered could not do this, it would subject the whole movement to ridicule and contempt. It was also urged that the name “Norfolk” would give that particular region an advantage over all other parts of England in the prospective sales of registered stock, and thus the old title was fully disposed of. When the name “cob” was suggested, it was conceded that it represented just what they had, but it was too common, as everybody in all England, rich and poor, had “cobs.” Then came the term “Hackney,” which meant the same kind of a horse as the cob, but as it was not in such universal use it was adopted. On this point it must be admitted that it is an honest name.

The Hackney is a good horse for all the uses to which he is adapted. He is short on his legs and stout, with a good share of nervous energy. He is symmetrical, and, we might say, handsome, if we can use that word without any show of fine breeding, for he is far short of the ideal blood horse. But he is not a saddle horse, he is not a hunter, he is not a runner, and he is not a trotter. As against these desirable and useful qualifications, he has been bred and trained when in action to jerk up his limbs to the highest point anatomically possible, and put them down again with a thud at a point but little removed from where he started. In this showy, undesirable action he exhausts his nervous energy, pounding the earth without covering much of the distance. In this excessive knee action every element of easy, graceful and rapid progression is wanting. This fad will have its day and then along with the barbarous excision of the caudal appendage they will disappear together as they came, and we will know them no more forever.

There are two points in advocating the merits of the Hackney with which every Englishman is thoroughly familiar and which he will call to your attention on the slightest provocation: (1) Bellfounder was a Hackney and it was his blood that gave us the greatest trotting sire that the world has ever produced. This is the Englishman’s estimate of Bellfounder when he has a Hackney for sale, and especially if the prospective purchaser be an American. (2) He is descended from a long line of distinguished trotters. To the first of these reiterated and parrot-like claims an answer will be found in the chapter relating to that horse, where his twenty-one years of stud service have been carefully considered, and where he is shown to have been a monumental failure. In the second claim there is some truth and we must consider it very briefly.

Of all the elements entering into the families of horses locally and indefinitely called Norfolk Trotters, there were two that might be looked upon as the founders—Useful Cub and Shales—for they were more conspicuous and valuable than any others. Mr. John Lawrence was not only a practical horseman, but he was the most intelligent and reliable of all the writers on the horse in the latter part of the last century. He was the only one who gave any attention to the trotter and trotting affairs. He says: “To old Shales and Useful Cub the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk are indebted for their fame in the production of capital Hackneys.” Useful Cub was bred by Thomas Jenkinson, of Long Sutton in Lincolnshire, and was foaled about 1865-70, and was got by a Suffolk cart horse, doubtless a light weight, and his dam was by Golden Farmer, a son of the famous half-bred Sampson, that was the great-grandsire of Messenger and beat most of the best horses of his day. Mr. Lawrence knew Useful Cub well, and was beaten by him in Hyde Park. We have no details of this horse’s performances, but it seems to be conceded that he trotted fifteen, sixteen and seventeen miles in the hour. Old Shales, or Scott’s Shales, as he is sometimes called, is described by Lawrence as “the bastard son of Blank,” son of Godolphin Arabian, but Mr. Euren, the compiler of the Hackney Stud Book maintains that he was the son of Blaze and not the son of Blank. The reasons given for this change I do not remember, but they would have to be well founded before I could throw overboard the contemporaneous evidence of Mr. Lawrence. It will not do to say that Mr. Lawrence mistook the name Blaze for Blank and so wrote it by mistake, for he knew all about both horses. This distinction, however, is of but little practical value. The horses Shales and Useful Cub were both fast and successful trotters, in their day, and they both became distinguished sires of trotters. By this I do not mean that they were the sires of all the trotters, for there were many that were wholly unknown in their breeding.

Judging from the numbers of leading contests that were reported in the _Sporting Magazine_ and other publications, we must conclude that trotting contests reached their height as well in numbers as in public interest about the last decade in the last century. The contests were all to saddle, on the road, and the leading ones were made under the watch and over a long distance of ground, specifying such or such a distance to be made inside of an hour. To form a correct estimate of the speed of those horses, I will copy one paragraph, entire, from the description given by Mr. Lawrence concerning his own mare Betty Bloss:

“My own brown mare, known by the name of Betty Bloss, was the slowest of all the capital trotters, but at five years old trotted fifteen miles in one hour, carrying fourteen stone, although fairly mistress of no more than ten. She afterward trotted sixteen miles within the hour, with ten stone, with much ease to herself and her rider. She was nearly broken down at four years old, had bad feet, and, besides, too much blood for a trotter, having been got by Sir Hale’s Commoner, out of a three-part-bred daughter of Rattle, son of Snip.”

In this paragraph, from the best-informed man of his generation, it will be noted incidentally that the cry, “no more running blood in the trotter,” is not new, but more than a hundred years old. The best performances were about sixteen miles in the hour, but there was an occasional one that reached sixteen and a half. A black gelding called Archer was recognized as the fastest of that period, and on one occasion under a stop watch he trotted the second one of two miles in a little less than three minutes. From my gleanings I find but a single instance from which we might be able to approximate the money value of trotting horses of that day, and this is given as a phenomenal price, viz., Marshland Shales, a paternal grandson of the original Shales and out of a mare by Hue and Cry. He had beaten Reed’s Driver in a match of seventeen miles for 200 guineas. He was foaled 1802 and in 1812 he was sold at auction for 3,051 guineas—$15,255. He was a great horse, but this price was just as startling to Englishmen of that day as the $105,000 was in our own day, when Axtell was sold. This seems to have been the culmination of the “boom” in Norfolk Trotters, and from then till the present there has been a steady deterioration in the trotting step of the Norfolk horse. In the earlier part of this period of eighty or ninety years, possibly some exceptions may be found, but they are only individual exceptions and do not controvert the broad fact that must be apparent to all observers. They had been breeding and training their horses to strike their chins with their knees—the up-and-down motion—instead of getting away and covering some ground in their action. I have stood and watched scores of them in the show-ring, on their native heath, with their grooms at the ends of long lines running and yelling like wild Indians to rouse up their horses, and they called this training the trotters. When I privately expressed the wish that saddles might be put on a few of the best and the ring cleared so that the trotting action might be studied, I was very kindly and politely assured that they did not show their trotters that way in England. Thus with the taut check-rein, the long leading-line and the whoops of the groom they got the up-and-down action upon the perfection of which the prizes were awarded. This explained why the splendid foundation of a breed had been lost by non-use and why England had produced no trotters in the past fifty or eighty years.

While our English cousins know they have no trotting horses of their own they seem to be exceedingly anxious, possibly for commercial reasons, to make it appear that the American trotting horse is the lineal descendant of the Norfolk Trotter. This effort is not restricted to the idle twaddle about Bellfounder, which everybody on this side of the Atlantic estimates at its true value, but it has taken an official and wider range, which, trifling though it be, my duty as a historian impels me to expose. Mr. Henry P. Euren, the compiler of the Hackney Stud Book, wrote to the Commissioner of Agriculture, at Washington, D. C., in 1888, taking exceptions to some conclusions reached in an article written by Mr. Leslie E. Macleod, in my office, on “The National Horse of America,” and published in the report of the Department of Agriculture for 1887; Mr. Euren claiming that the American trotting horse came originally from Norfolk, in England. In proof of this he says: “I beg to inclose you a cutting which confirms my idea.” And now for the “cutting” which he offers as proof:

“It appears from an Act of Parliament, passed December 6, 1748, in the Legislature of the State of New Jersey, America, that on and after the publication of this Act, all Norfolk pacing or trotting of horses for lucre or gain, or for any sum or sums of money at any time (excepting such times as are hereafter expressly provided for by this Act), shall be and are hereby declared public nuisances, provided always that at all fairs that are or may be held within this province, and that on the first working day after the three great festivals of Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide, etc., etc.”

The act passed by the provincial legislature of the colony of New Jersey in 1748 embraced very stringent regulations against dice, lotteries, etc., as well as horse racing. It is divided into several sections, and at Section 4 we reach the provision against racing as follows:

“And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid that after the publication of this Act, all horse racing, pacing or trotting of horses for lucre or gain, or for any sum or sums of money at any time (excepting such times as are hereafter expressly provided for and allowed by this Act), shall be and are hereby declared public nuisances, and shall be prosecuted as public nuisances, in manner hereinbefore directed. Provided always, and it is the true intent and meaning of this Act, that at all fairs that are or may be held within this province, and that on the first working day after the three grand festivals of Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide, etc., etc.”

These quotations are sufficiently extended to afford an unmistakable comparison, and on their face evidence that cannot be doubted for one moment that they both purport to be copied from the same act of the Jersey Colonial legislature. In the official printed copy which is before me as I write, the mandate is against “all horse racing, pacing or trotting of horses for lucre or gain.” In Mr. Euren’s “cutting” the mandate is against “all Norfolk pacing or trotting of horses for lucre or gain,” etc. The substitution of the word “Norfolk” instead of “horse racing,” is in the nature of a forgery, and I cannot believe that Mr. Euren would be guilty of any such execrable piece of trickery. It must have been conceived and written by some horse sharp who was trying to sell a Hackney to an American with a pocket full of money, and after he had effected his sale he could mutter quietly, when at a safe distance from his victim, the couplet from “Hudibras:”

“The paltry story is untrue And forged to cheat such gulls as you.”

Unfortunately, however, for Mr. Euren, he indorsed the trick, and not only indorsed it, but sent it to the Commissioner of Agriculture with the hope and possible expectation that it would receive public recognition and become part of the horse history of this country. Did he not know that somebody would be nosing round among the old laws and expose the dirty deception? But, on the basis that Mr. Euren was deceived by this wretched interpolation of a fraud into the law, could he not see that the date of the law—1748—was before old Shales or Useful Cub was foaled, and long before the very first “Norfolk trotter” was ever heard of either in Norfolk or in any other part of England?

The exposure of this foolish attempt, wherever it originated, to incorporate into an old New Jersey statute a fiction, or a forgery, as it may be called, carries with it a punishment that should be felt by the most unscrupulous of horse sharps; but when we find it unequivocally indorsed and given to the world as true by the compiler of the Hackney Stud Book, it destroys all confidence in the accuracy and reliability of that work. This is a misfortune that the friends of the Hackney in England as well as in this country must feel as a blow at the value of the whole interest. Opinions may change with new light, and opposing conclusions may be honestly reached from different standpoints, but running against a fixed and certain date, as in this case, is like running against a two-edged sword.

In conclusion, the Hackney is merely the dear-bought and far-fetched fashion of the hour. A few years ago he was “something new in horses,” just as the modiste has “something new in dresses.” He was found in England, where there are no flies, without a tail, and as that was the fashion in England we must have horses in America without tails, notwithstanding the millions of torments they have to endure without the natural means of defense. As hack-a-bouts they are good horses, but their “churn-dasher” style of action will never become acceptable to the American people.

A few years since a quite persistent attempt, backed by unlimited wealth and all the prestige that metropolitan “fashion” and “society” could bestow, was made, particularly in New York, to create a Hackney “boom” in America. All that element in the social life of our great cities that affects a disdain for things distinctively American, and particularly for American horses, and that glories in the stultifying habit of aping things “English, ye know,” took up the Hackney fad with unbounded enthusiasm. As a park and road horse the American horse—the incomparable trotting-bred driver—was to be incontinently crowded out of the driveways, the markets and the shows. The National Horse Show Association, whose annual show at Madison Square Garden is the great social _fête_ of the year in New York, lent all its powerful influence to forward the Hackney “boom,” which was, it must in fairness be said, consistent; for the miscalled National Horse Show has always catered more to foreign horses and foreign customs in horsemanship than to American horses and horsemen. Men of great wealth and prominence established extensive Hackney studs, imported famous prize-winning stallions and mares, and there was only one thing left to be done, and that was to convert the American people to the belief that the driving horse they had been breeding and developing with a special purpose and care—the fleetest and most versatile harness horse in the world—was inferior to an imported nondescript. In that attempt the Hackney advocates have failed in America as completely as did Mr. Blunt and others in England, when they sought to make racing men believe that the Arab was a better race horse than the English thoroughbred.

Perhaps nothing illustrates better what I have called the versatility of the trotter than this contest with the Hackney in the latter’s own especial field—if he may be said to have any. Of course there could be no contest between the horse of a special breed and the nondescript as a harness horse for speed or usefulness on the road, whether the distance were half a mile or a hundred miles; but in the show-ring the Hackney men claimed absolute pre-eminence for their “high-acting” horses. They did not dare contest with the trotter in the matter of road speed, so to have any contest at all the trotting horse men had to “carry the war into Africa.” This they have done with a vengeance. They have taken the pure-bred trotting horse, dressed him in the fashion dictated by the Hackney “faddists,” taught him the Hackney tricks, the preposterous Hackney action and all that, and have beaten the Hackneys not once but time and again right on their own ground, viz., at the National Horse Show in Madison Square Garden. In almost all cases in classes where trotters have been admitted to compete with Hackneys, the former have carried off the honors within the past two years. Many notable instances might be cited, but one will suffice. At the National Horse Show, 1896, a class was offered for “half-bred Hackneys,” sires to be shown with four of their get. The Hackney end of the argument was upheld by Mr. A. J. Cassatt’s renowned prize-winner, imported Cadet, with four of his get. Against him was entered the well-known trotting sire Almont Jr., 2:26, with four of his get, and though the judges were gentlemen identified more or less with the Hackney interest, so superior in form, action and style were the four youngsters by the trotting sire that they carried away the honors from the chosen progeny of one of the most noted Hackney show horses in the world.

In the sale ring this verdict has been corroborated. The highest prices—the record figures—paid in the fashionable New York market for park horses, “high steppers,” or by whatever name the merely spectacular harness horse may from time to time be called, have been paid for trotting-bred horses: and in advertised sales of “Hackneys” it has become somewhat common to encounter half-trotting-bred and full-trotting-bred horses.

While no genuine American and horseman can without regret see a typical American horse mutilated and his action perverted in the manner required to bring him into “Hackney” classes at the National Horse Show, or in the markets where New York society people buy their stub-tailed horses, it is some compensation to know that these experiments have demonstrated the superiority of the American-bred horse even in the field claimed as especially that of the Hackney. And the Hackney “fad” in America, while it lasted, accomplished a good end in so far as it directed the attention of American breeders more to the importance of form and style, and taught them that in their own trotting families they have the material from which may best be produced, in form and style and quality as well as in speed, pre-eminently the most excellent park horses in the world.