Daniel Lambert, 102, was a chestnut horse, foaled 1858; got by Ethan Allen, 43; dam Fanny Cook, by Abdallah; grandam by Stockholm’s American Star, etc. His color was a light chestnut, and his mane and tail were of the yellow, flaxen shade. He was about fifteen hands high and long and light in the body, with no indications of Morgan blood about him unless it was in the kinkiness of his mane and tail. But why should he not resemble almost anything else than the little nondescript Morgan, when he had only one-sixteenth of his blood in his veins? He had more Messenger than Morgan blood, and according to the rules of arithmetic it is a misnomer to call him a Morgan. More than this, his dam was a daughter of the great Abdallah, far and away the greatest trotting sire of his generation. When we consider that he had four times as much of the blood of Abdallah as he had of the original Morgan, we can see the absurdity of sticking to the right male line after that line has been wiped out by other lines far more potential. Lambert was bred by Mr. John Porter of Ticonderoga, New York, and as a colt he showed great promise on the ice, and was thought to be the fastest and best of the get of Ethan Allen. He was known far and wide as the “Porter Colt,” and he was the popular heir to very great expectations. To have created so much enthusiasm he must have shown great speed for a youngster, and he is credited with a record of 2:42 as a three-year-old. As a sire of trotters he stood very high at one time and was even with Blue Bull in his number of representatives in the 2:30 list, but in the end the little “plebeian” pacer outstripped him a long way. Lambert put thirty-seven trotters into the 2:30 list, but when we come to study this list we are not very favorably impressed, for about one-third of the animals have but a single heat inside of the mark, with only five or six reputable campaigners and a single one—Comee—that ranked among the real good ones. Comee had seventy-one heats to his credit and a record of 2:21¼. Thirty-three of Daniel Lambert’s sons have put one hundred and thirty-six in the list, and forty-four of his daughters have produced seventy-four performers.
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.