Next came the horses. The stamp varied from nearly thoroughbred to Clydesdale and Percheron stud-horses, with a fair number of mares and foals. The parade of the horses each day, as they were led round the ring each by its own attendant, was a very pretty sight. Nothing special need be said of the well-bred stock--that is much the same the world over; only the size proved how well adapted Oregon is for the home of horses of a high class. What interested us most were very fine specimens of what are called here heavy horses for farm-work. Standing fully sixteen hands high, with long but compact bodies, good heads, with large, full eyes, and hard, clean legs, fit to draw a light wagon six or seven miles an hour over muddy roads, and to drag a sixteen-inch plow through valley soil, they seemed to us the very models of the horse the valley farmers should breed in any number. We regretted to notice the large number of Clydesdales and Percherons; the latter type of horse especially we deprecate--tall grays, with thick necks, heavy heads, upright shoulders, slim, round bodies, hairy, clumsy legs, huge flat feet covered with the mass of hair depending from the fetlock. Just such you may see any day in the farm-carts in the north of France--a team of four in a string, the shaft-horse overshadowed by the huge cart with wheels six feet high; the carter plodding by the side, in his blue blouse with his long whip. Just to settle a controversy with some Percheron-mad Oregonian friends, we had several horses of the two different types measured then and there. We found the Oregon mare girthed nearly a foot more round the body behind the shoulders than the Percheron horse. The girth of the forearm below the shoulder was greater. The Percheron was the taller at the shoulder, the thicker round the fetlock, and, I should think, carried two extra pounds of horse-hair in mane, tail, and fetlock-tufts. The Oregon mare showed just those points which every horse-lover seeks, to testify to activity, strength, endurance, and intelligence; the Percheron was lacking in such respects, but instead had a certain cart-horse comeliness, looking more suitable for a brewer's van in a big city than for our farms and roads. [Sidenote: _THE RACES._]