The Opelousas courier., 1892-02-20
THE TRUE
HE Is THE ONLY GENUINE AFaL5.
ToCRAT IN THE WORLD.
The Story of the Blooded Horse r
the Days of Mohammed, and on
to Our Own.

The Story of the BIooded Horse From
the DAYS of Mohammed. and OF
to Our Own.
The only genuine aristocrat on earth
is the Thoroughbred horse. Compared
with his pedigree, the blood OF the best
born man is a mud-puddle, for no fam
lily, however great. has remained long
without the mixture of some humber
strain. But the presence OF a single
drop of blood from an animal who's
name is not written in the stud book is
enough to bar a horse from this class. 1t
is true the stud book, with two excep-
tions, gives no dates earlier than the
eighteenth century, but every thorough
bred horse now in existence can be traced
to one Of three horses brou 1ht to Eng
land in the latter part of the seventeenth
century, from a country where the rep
utation of a horse is a matter OF price
and triumph to a whole tribe, and his
canture or death almost as great a ca
lamity as the loss oil their chief; where
he lives with the family, petted by the
children, washed, and combed, and dec
grated by the women, and where his
pedigree is their most precious record.
The Arabs claim that every horse of the
Kochlani, as they call their royal breed,
can show direct descent from one of the
mares that carried the prophet Mahone6,
and they are fond of asserting that these
mares were descended from the horses
which the Queen of Sheba brought as q
present to King Solomon.
The three horses who stamped then-
selves so indelibly upon the English
breed were the barley Arabian, the
Godolphin Arabian Cor, more accurately
Barb, for he came from the Barbary
States and differed somewhas from the
true Arab, and the Beverly Turk, 80
called, because he was the charger OF
Captain Byerly, an English officer in the
Irish wars of King William Ill in 1853.
The barley was the true Arab, and be-
came the propenitor of a large majority
of all the Thoroughbred horses now In
existence. The G%odolphin came to Eng
land from France, where a gentleman by
the name of Coke saw him hitched to a
cart in the streets of Paris. Struck by
his appearance, he inquired about him,
and finding that he came from Africa,
bought him, it is said, for ten guineas,
and presented him to the Earl of Godol-
phin. His height was fifteen hands, and
he had an enormously high crest. Each
of these horses IS represented by descen-
| dants whose brilliant records on the turf
| have made them historical, aud modern
| pedigrees are not usually traced any
further back. The barley is represented
by two lines. one through Flying Oalld-
ers. Snap and Waxy were through she
former line and Eclipse through tbs lat
ter. Flying Childers was the wonder Of
his age and was never beaten. OF course
the time-honored tradition Of his running
a mile a minute is a transparent fiction
as a horse would have to cover
lightweight feet-that is make more
than three strides in a second. Eclipse
was the property of a Mr.. OKelly. In
his first race against a large tfsld OF
horses, his owner offered, before the
horses started for the second heat, to
name the order in which every one
would finish. This seemed to be an i'm.
possible offer, and bets at great odds
were made. When called on to declare
the order. Mr.. O'Kelly shouted: ECLIPSE
first, and the rest nowhere" As
Eclipse distanced the whole field. they
had, in turf language, no place, aud Mr..
0'Kelly won a large fortune.
Eclipse started eighteen times and was
never beaten. The representative of the
Byerly Turk is the great King Herod,
foaled in 1853. Herod was a bay if
teen hands three inches, possessing sreat
girth and length combined with immense
staying powers. He was bred by the
Duke of Cumberland, the uncle OF
George III. OF Herod's progeny Wood
pecker, Glencoe and Bay Middleton are
the most famous. Glencoe was imported
to this country, and his daughters were
bred to our immortal Lexington with
such success that it was called the
golden cross.
Bay Middleton was s. fast that when
his owner was asked if he could stay for
four miles, said he couldn't say as no
horse he had ever met could stay with
him for a mile and a half. The Godol-
phin is represented by Matches and
sorcerer. Speaking generally the OAR
ley is the stout blood, the Turk the
speedy blood and the Godolphin the
large breed, but with a tendency to die
OUT, and nowadays extremely rare. To
show the va ne of pure blood, Samson. a
horse of the eighteenth century, was oil
unknown pedigree. He was n of the
best horses of the day and his son Bay
Nation, was as good. Their success
raisei quite IN outcry against the theory
of the breeders. But in the next gener-
alton the advocates of pure blood had
the laugh on their side. No colt OF
Bay Nation was worth his feed, and
today no intelligent breeder would touch
a horse that had any trace of the Sam.
son blood.
Our American thoroughbred is of trulI
royal blood. Almost every horse now on
u turf who is not the result of later
importatio1s is decended from Diomed,
n Of the best grandsons Of King Herod,
He was brought to Virginia and his son,
Sir Arehy, born in 1905, became 50
famous that his colts were eagerly sought
by breeders. The great Lexington, who
thirty years ago shared in the public
heart a place with Flora Temple, wa
the best son Of Boston, who was the
best son of Timoleon, who was the best
son of Sir Arehr who ,uas fha hnnt snn