The Horse of America in His Derivation, History, and Development

by John Hankins Wallace

Some sixteen or eighteen years ago, an English gentleman of wealth and intelligence—Mr. Wilfrid S. Blunt—got it into his head that the way to improve the English race horse was to secure fresh infusions of pure Arabian blood. He was industrious in propagating his fad, in an amateurish way, through the columns of the English newspapers, evincing great zeal and a great lack of knowledge of the hundreds of experiments in the same direction and in the history of his own country that had proved disastrous. But he had a will of his own and a bank account that enabled him to carry out his views to their own realization. In the autumn of 1877 he made up a pleasant family party, consisting of his wife, Lady Anne, and two of her lady friends and started for Arabia, with the full determination to find the best and to buy nothing that was not of the purest and best lineage that could be found in all that country. Fortunately, Lady Anne carefully noted down everything that transpired in their journeyings and after the return wrote a very pleasant and readable book, understood to have been edited by her husband in some of its features. The title of the book—“The Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates”—did not strike me pleasantly, for I never knew that any of the numerous Bedouin tribes were to be found on the Euphrates. But my purpose is not to criticise either the book or its title, but to follow the party over its itinerary and discover just where Mr. Blunt found the blood he was looking for, and upon what evidence he accepted it as “the best blood.” With this view I will carefully give his own language, so far as it applies to the point in view.

His first purchase was at Aleppo, where he got a mare he named Hagar, as he says, “for a very moderate sum.” “She was of the Kehilan-Ajuz breed.” “When purchased she was in very poor condition, having just gone through the severe training of a campaign.” “She was bred by the Gommussa, the most able of the horse-breeding tribes, had passed from them to the Roala, and had now been captured and ridden some two hundred miles, in hot haste, for sale to Aleppo.” “We never met anything in our travels that could compete with her over a distance, and she has often run down foxes and even hares, without assistance, carrying thirteen stone on her back.” This was the first experience of the English “tenderfoot” among Syrian horsethieves. According to his own showing, he bought her from the fellow who had stolen her and had ridden her two hundred miles to escape, and he accepted what the thief told about the breeding of the mare as true. The thief knew just what Mr. Blunt wanted and he shaped the pedigree and tracing to suit the purchaser. Mr. Blunt had no knowledge of this mare’s breeding, nor where she came from; still, her blood was to become one of the great influences in renovating the English race horse. This incident is of no importance, in itself, except as it illustrates the universal conditions under which amateurs buy horses in the Orient.

Upon leaving Aleppo, the party traveled eastward till they struck the Euphrates and then down the right bank of that river. The first town of any importance was Deyr, on the river, and just across was ancient Mesopotamia. They were still in the border land between the productive north and the desert south, with the Syrian desert between them and the Arabian desert. All this region is occupied with a mixture of races, employed in varied pursuits, with but a feeble trace of tribal authority, as all are under the direct government of the Sultan of Turkey.

“Deyr is well-known,” Mr. Blunt says, “as a horse market, and is, perhaps, the only town north of the Jebel Shammar where the inhabitants have any general knowledge of the blood and breeding of the beasts they possess. The townsmen, indeed, are but a single step removed from the Bedouins, their undoubted ancestors. They usually purchase their colts as yearlings either from the Gomussa, or some of the Sabaa tribes, and having broken them thoroughly, sell them at three years old to the Aleppo merchants. They occasionally, too, have mares left with them, in partnership, by the Anazah, and from these they breed according to the strictest desert rules. It is, therefore, for a stranger, by far the best market for thoroughbreds in Asia, and you may get some of the best blood at Deyr that can be found anywhere, besides having a guarantee of its authenticity, impossible, under ordinary circumstances, to get at Damascus or Aleppo. There are, I may say, no horses at Deyr but thoroughbreds.”

He made some purchases at Deyr and then they pursued their journey down the river, and at the most convenient point he crossed over to Bagdad, on the Tigris. Here he inspected the stud of the Turkish pasha, but the prices were high and he seemed to lack confidence in the purity of their breeding. Whatever the cause, he made no purchases, and soon started on his journey up the Tigris. Upon reaching Sherghat on the Tigris, he turned westward, and crossing ancient Mesopotamia, he was again at Deyr, where he seems to have made more purchases, and then started, in a southwesterly direction, with eighteen mares and two stallions for Damascus and the coast. This closed the search of Arabia for Arabian horses of the highest caste and purest blood, without really being in Arabia, and this is all that can be said of “The Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates”—without having seen a real Bedouin.

No doubt Mr. Blunt thinks he is right in his high appreciation of the town of Deyr as a horse market; that it is “the best market for thoroughbreds in Asia;” and that “there are no horses in Deyr but thoroughbreds,” or he would not have bought his horses there. Dealing in horses seems to be the principal business of the people, they are all well informed on the best and purest strains of blood, according to Mr. Blunt, and all their own horses are thoroughbred. Truly an ideal market, an ideal people, and ideal horses, just suited to the needs of enthusiastic amateurs like Mr. Blunt. This remarkable horse town is located on the border between the rich grain fields and luxuriant meadows on the north, and the comparatively barren deserts of the south. On the north the country has been famous for thousands of years for the great numbers and excellence of the horses produced, and they are still produced of excellent form and quality, and are sold at very low prices. On the south is the land of the camel, and but few horses and those few held at high prices, and the simple term “Arabian horse” always brings them purchasers. Here, then, we find that Deyr is the very paradise of horse traders—a tribe, wherever we find them on the face of the earth, distinguished for elasticity of conscience. The north furnishes the horses and the south furnishes the pedigrees, and no wonder the Deyrites had nothing but “thoroughbreds” when Mr. Blunt came along. In the line of their business and from their southern neighbors, they had picked up enough “Arabian horse talk” to satisfy all inexperienced buyers that they knew all about the value of the different strains of Arabian blood, and could supply them from their own studs, at very reasonable prices. And thus Mr. Blunt brought home to England eighteen “Arabian” mares and two stallions, without any satisfactory evidence that they ever had seen Arabia. In this enthusiastic venture, resulting in utter failure, there is one alleviating fact that Mr. Blunt can call to mind, and that is that his horses were just as good for the purpose of improving the English race horse as any others that have been brought from the Orient in the past hundred years. Whatever their blood, whether genuine or counterfeit Arabians, they have all alike been failures, and all alike good for nothing.

Early in the history of our own government it became not an unusual thing for the Sultan of Turkey, the Emperor of Morocco, or some other potentate of the Saracenic races, to present to the President two horses, and as they were presents from royalty to what they esteemed royalty, they were necessarily of the highest caste and of the greatest value of any horses in all their dominions. It is probable that Mr. Jefferson was the first president to receive these royal gifts, and under the requirements of the constitution and without any disrespect to the donor, he ordered them to be sold to the highest bidder, and turned the money into the treasury. Several of the presidents received these presents of horses, and without knowing the fact, I will presume disposed of them the same way. In the case of President Lincoln, Mr. Seward seemed to be more highly favored and the sultan sent the horses to him. Through the State Agricultural Society, Mr. Seward presented his royal presents to the State of New York. My recollection is not very distinct, but my impression is that Mr. Van Buren had disposed of his in the same way. When General Grant received his, he was not in public office and hence they became his personal property. A number of the first of these importations, together with some others that were brought from Arabia, individually and by private persons, were, in the early part of the century, carried into the South, which was then the “race-horse region,” but the breeders there very soon discovered that in breeding from them they were taking a backward instead of a forward step. Their progeny could neither run nor trot, and as they were too small for the ordinary uses of the farmer and planter, they were almost unanimously rejected, with nothing left but the ignorant “fad” that was embodied in the name “Arabian.”

The most notable example of the folly of attempting to regenerate the American race horse by the introduction of the “blood of the desert” is furnished in the sad experience of the late A. Keene Richards, of Kentucky. He inherited a large estate, and when he came into possession he proved himself an intelligent and successful breeder, and ran the colts of his own breeding, with a full share of winnings. He was not a spendthrift nor a gambler, but he was not content with mediocrity in sharing triumphs with his neighbors, for he was ambitious to beat, them all. He soon had his head full of such horses as the Darley Arabian and the Godolphin Arabian, and he argued if that blood founded the English race horse, he would go to Arabia and get it, and it could not fail to regenerate the American race horse. He did not stop to inquire whether either of his great ideals might have had a drop of Arabian blood in his veins, but he started for Arabia at once. He brought home a few stallions and felt sure he was on the eve of the greatest triumph of his life. When the half-Arab produce of his strong and elegantly bred race mares were old enough to run the jockey club allowed the half-breeds seven pounds the advantage in weight and they were beaten. The club then allowed them fourteen pounds and they were again beaten; and finally the allowance was raised to twenty-one pounds, and they were still in the rear rank. Under these humiliating defeats a careful man would have hesitated before he went further, but he at once jumped to the conclusion that his defeat was not in the fact that Arab blood could not run fast enough to win, but in the fact, as he supposed, that the rascally Arabs had sold him blood that was not Arab blood. In a short time he was off for Arabia again, taking with him as companion and adviser the distinguished animal painter, Troye, who had a long and successful experience as a delineator of race horses and knew all about the anatomy of the horse. They spent several months among the different tribes, and in order to get “inside of the ring,” as it were, they ate with the Arabs, slept with the Arabs, and worshiped with the Arabs, as Mr. Richards told me himself. They came home full of the highest expectations, bringing several mares as well as stallions with them, and fully assured that every one was of the highest caste and the best form for racing that could be found on all the plains of the desert. After the foals of this importation were old enough to start in the stakes, they were given the same advantages in weight as before, and they proved no better than the first lot. Poor Mr. Richards was crushed in spirits, not only by the vanishing of his air castles, but by the importunacy of his creditors. In his heroic, but misguided, efforts to improve the American race horse by infusions of pure Arabian blood, he involved his once handsome estate, and he died hopelessly insolvent. He had bred a number of pure Arabs of several generations, but the abundant feed and luxuriant blue grass of Kentucky did not increase their size, for when they came under the auctioneer’s hammer they were but little “tackeys,” and they brought only the price of little “tackeys.”

The number of horses brought to this country, whether as gifts to statesmen or as private ventures, and called “Arabians,” is not very large, and it is safe to say that not one in ten of them ever saw Arabia. They came from Turkey or some of the Barbary States. But in the case of Mr. Richards there can be no doubt that he made his selections in Arabia itself. Those selections having been made personally and with care and skill, we are bound to accept them as genuine Arabians. When we find, therefore, that having been tested they are no better than the horses brought from Turkey or from Africa, we must conclude that the whole scheme is mere moonshine, and that Arabian blood as a means of improvement has failed to develop the value that enthusiasts and dreamers have claimed for it since “time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.” Practical and thinking men always judge of the value of a breed of horses from what the representatives of that breed can do or what they fail to do. The emotional and unpractical are always looking for an ideal horse, and the poets and story writers are always furnishing them one. Where a horse figures in a story he is uniformly endowed with an almost supernatural intelligence and sense. To finish up the ideal horse, he always traces back to the “Courser of the Desert.” If his triumph is in a flight of speed, he distances all competitors because he is a pure Arabian. The story of “Ben Hur,” written by General Lew Wallace, furnishes a fitting illustration of this tendency of the public mind. The story of the chariot race at Antioch is a masterpiece of most exciting ingenuity, and one of the finest specimens of word painting in the English language. The irascible old sheik is quite overdrawn, but the judgment and skill of Ben Hur cannot be surpassed. As a matter of course, the team of black Arabians was bound to win. Every bright schoolboy in the country has read the story, and he has joined in the triumph of the black Arabians. The wide interest in the chariot race seemed to demand its pictorial delineation, and soon the public was gratified with a large and elegant etching, which hangs before me as I write. The only trouble about this excellent work of the imagination and the team of black Arabians is that there were no horses in Arabia till about three hundred and fifty years after the date of this supposed scene. We must let the poets sing and the novelists work out their plots, but it is well to pay some attention to the facts and experiences of history.