The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-08-17
HORSE RACING AND HORSES.


could be said, if it could always be rescued
from the hands of gamblers and kept un-
der the control of gentlemen. Man is by
nature q social, gregarious animal and out
door sports of some sort are necessity Of
his being. Against aquatic sports, like
yachting and rowing matches, nothing can
be said; against baseball, or even shooting
matches. since it has become no longer
necessary to wantonly murder wild pig
cons to make holiday, nothing can be
said, and horse racing, when kept above
the dirty fingers of corrupt turf gamblers
and venal jockeys, not an easy thing to do,
is not open to denunciation. 1t has many
refined and captivating coincidents In its
attendance and surroundings; it is not
open to the charge of inhumanity or bru-
tally to either the horse, his driver or
rider; it is seldom disfgured by the oc-
currence of accidents that cause injury to
life or limb, and 1t is certainly worthy of
the high place il holds among legitimate
public sports.
1t is matter for regret that the sporting
world of California has become absorbed
in prizehghting to the deterioration OF
horse racing, and it is q matter for deeper
regret that the brutal tastes of California
do not seem to be confined to her soil, but
seem to be spreading like pestilence to
other coasts. 1t is pity that the public
passion for outdoor sports cannot content
itself with what is the humane, decent and
exciting recreation of the turf, baseball and
aquatic sports, without running wild over
prizefighting and its blood relation foot
ball as practiced at the East. If "sold"
races were unknown the turf would be at
tractive to thousands who now take little
interest in it, but tricks on the turf have
always disfgured it; even George the
Fourth, when Prince Regent, was detected
in turf swindling transaction, exposed
and disgraced so thoroughly that had he
not been heir to the throne he would have
been forced into social exile like Sir Will
lam Gordon Cumming.
The love of mankind for fine horses
dates back to the dawn of the authentic
literature of the world. The horses of
Achilles; his charioteer Automedon are
conspicuous minor figures in the Iliad; the
epithet "horsetaming'' is in constant use
and application, and horse racing undoubt-
edly was among the primitive public
sports of the Greeks and the Romans long
before chariot races formed part of their
officially established national games
and spectacles. The horse, by his
early intimate companionship with
man, both as beast of burden
in the fields and as war horse
and hunter, was always held in high es-
TEEN, and with his further capacity to
crafty the passion of his master for
recreation in racing contests, the
horse has always justly held the highest
rank among domestic animals. The
trainer of "Jay Eye See" is reported to
have once said: eff that horse dies I die
too" 1t is easy to laugh at this as the en-
thusiasm of a man whose soul does not
rise above horse heaven, and yet it was
perfectly natural expression for the attach
ment which a fine horse has always ex-
cited among all men of outdoor tastes,
whether persons of high or low degree.
Shakespeare, Washington, Jackson, Oliver
Cromwell, Grant, were as passionately fond
of fine horses as any horse trainer that
ever lived, and no Indian ever loved his
pony more fondly than Sheridan did his
war horse. The passion for fine horses is
so universal that it seems like survival in
civilization of the gypsy tastes which men
had when they were nearly all hunters, cat
tie herders and shepherds; it is like the
passion for hunting and angling that We
find among the clergy, who have long since
ceased to act or sympathize with the church
militant.
Horse racing, as practiced in England,
France and the United States, Is compara-
lively of recent date. The Puritan found
ers of New England permitted no public
sports, but both the Dutch, who originally
settled the colony of New York, and the
English, who succeeded to its possession
by conquest, were a cheerful, convivial
class of folk, and to please them Richard
Nichols, the first royal governor of New
York, established a race course on Long
Island in 1865, where for more than GEN.
fury races were annually run under the
patronage of the colonial governor, the
council and the gentry of the city. rae
ing course was established in Charleston,
S. c., in 1854, and at Philadelphia
in l760. The two great racing families
of New York were the De Lanceys
and the Morrises. AS early as
1867 Northern and Southern horses were
matched against each other on the New
York course, and in 1863 race course was
established at Annapolis, Nd, where De
Lancey lost a match where the stake was
half-bushel of Spanish dollars, and in
1773 the Marylanders refused to stake their
money against the Virginia currency at
the Leedstown course on the Potomac, the
Virginia currency having been extensively
counterfeited.
There was q celebrated race in 1765
on the Philadelphia course for f1.oOo
between True Briton, an English-born,
and Selin, an American horse, which was
won by the latter.
The Revolution put an end to colonial
horse racing, the continental congress of
IVA agreeing for themselves and their con-
stituents to discourage every species of
! extravaganza, especially horse racing"
and in answer to this call the Jockey Club
of Annapolis at once periodically gave up
their November races and in 1875 Royalist
James De Lancey was compelled TO sell
out his stud. The Morrises were divided
by the war into royalist and patriotic
r