CHAPTER XIII.

ANTIQUITY AND HISTORY OF THE PACING HORSE.

The mechanism of the different gaits—The Elgin Marbles—Britain becomes a Roman province—Pacers in the time of the Romans—Bronze horses of Venice—Fitz Stephen, the Monk of Canterbury—Evidence of the Great Seals—What Blundeville says—What Gervaise Markham says—What the Duke of Newcastle says—The amble and the pace one and the same—At the close of Elizabeth’s reign—The Galloways and Hobbies—Extinction of the pacer—The original pacer probably from the North—Polydore Virgil’s evidence—Samuel Purchas’ evidence—The process of wiping out the pacer—King James set the fashion—All foreign horses called “Arabians”—The foreigners larger and handsomer—Good roads and wheeled vehicles dispensed with the pacer—Result of prompting Mr. Euren—Mr. Youatt’s blunder—Other English gentlemen not convinced there ever were any pacers.

In considering the antiquity and history of the pacing horse, it seems to be necessary that we should have a clear perception of the mechanism of the gait from which he takes his distinctive name and the relation which that mechanism bears to other gaits or means of progression. In the study of this mechanism we learn the combination by which we unlock the mystery that has puzzled so many breeders of the past and present generations. Some have maintained that the pace is a combination of the trot and the gallop, while a smaller number have maintained that the fast trot was a combination of the pace and the gallop. It is quite evident, as I will be able to show, that neither of these parties has ever given any careful attention and study to the mechanism of the different gaits. The most simple and least complicated method of illustrating this mechanism of movement is furnished in the human means of progression. At the walk, a man steps off with his left foot and the heel of that foot strikes the ground before the toe of the right foot leaves it. Then the right foot advances and strikes the ground before the toe of the left foot leaves it. This is the natural “heel and toe” walk, and the speed may be increased by quickening the step and extending the stride, so far as physical conformation will permit. Still greater speed becomes a succession of bounds, the propelling foot leaving the ground before the advanced foot strikes it. This is running, the highest rate of speed attainable, and in every revolution, for a space, the whole body is in the air. In the action of the horse, with four legs, we find greater complication, which I will try to make clear.

First, all horses walk, all horses pace or trot, and all horses gallop. The walk is easily analyzed, for it is slow and the movement of each limb can be followed by the eye. Each foot makes its own stroke upon the ground, and we count one, two, three, four in the revolution.

Second, at the gallop, which is a succession of leaps, each limb, as shown by the instantaneous photograph, performs its own function, whether in rising from the ground, flying through the air, or in striking the ground again. There is harmony in all, but there is no unity in any two or more of them, and when they strike the ground again you hear the impacts, one, two, three, four, in a cluster. The conventional drawing of the running horse in action is impossible in nature, and a wretched caricature of the action as it is. As in the walk, so in the run, we count four impacts in the revolution.

Third, at the pace the horse advances the two feet, on the same side, at the same time, and when they reach the ground again there is but one impact; then the two feet on the other side are advanced and strike in the same way. Thus, the rhythm of the action strikes the ear as that of the movement of an animal with two feet instead of four. In this there can be no mechanical mistake, for in the revolution of the four-legged pacing horse we count one, two, and in the revolution of the two-legged man we count one, two. The conclusion, therefore, seems to be inevitable that the two legs on the same side of the pacing horse act in perfect unison in performing the functions of one leg. At the trot the horse advances the two diagonal feet at the same time, and when they reach the ground again there is but one impact; then the two other diagonal feet are advanced and strike in the same way. Thus, the rhythm of the action strikes the ear as that of the movement of an animal with two feet instead of four. In this there can be no mechanical mistake, for in the revolution of the four-legged trotting horse we count one, two, and in the revolution of the two-legged man we count one, two. The conclusion, therefore, seems to be inevitable that the two diagonal legs of the trotting horse act in perfect unison in performing the function of one leg. In the mechanism of the gait then that is midway between the walk and the gallop there is no difference in results, nor distinction in the economy of motion, except that the pacer uses the lateral legs as one, and the trotter the diagonal legs as one. In use, there is a vertical distinction, if that term should be allowed, between the gait of the pacer and the trotter. The action of the pacer is lower and more gliding which fits him for the saddle, while the action of the trotter is higher and more bounding which makes him more desirable as a harness horse. In the processes of inter-breeding to the fastest, this distinction, if it be a distinction, seems to be coming less real, or at least less observable.

While the essential oneness of the pace and the trot is indicated above from the mechanism and unity of the two gaits, there is a great mountain of evidence to be developed when we reach the consideration of breeding subjects, in which we will meet multitudes of fast trotters getting fast pacers, and fast pacers getting fast trotters; fast pacers changed over to fast trotters and fast trotters changed over to fast pacers, and the final evidence that speed at the one gait means speed at the other. Having briefly explained what a pacer is, it is now in order to take up the question of whence he came.

On the summit of the Acropolis, in Athens, stand the ruins of the Parthenon, a magnificent temple erected to the goddess Minerva. The building was commenced in the year B.C. 437, and was completed five years afterward. All the statuary was the work of the famous Phidias and his scholars, made from Pentelic marble. This noted building resisted all the ravages of time, and had, in turn, been converted into a Christian temple and a Turkish mosque. In 1676 it was still entire, but in 1687 Athens was besieged by the Venetians, and the Parthenon was hopelessly wrecked. As a ruin it became the prey of the Turks and all other devastators, and in order to save something of what remained of its precious works of art, Lord Elgin, about the year 1800, brought home to England some portions of the frieze of the temple, with other works of Phidias, in marble, sold them to the government, and they are preserved in the British Museum. This frieze is a most interesting subject to study, not only as a specimen of Greek art of the period of Pericles, but as a historic record of the type and action of the Greek horses of that day. It consists of a series of white marble slabs, something over four feet wide, upon which are sculptured, in high relief, the heroes and defenders of Athens, mounted on horses, and some of these horses are pacing, while others are trotting and cantering. This is the first undoubted record we have of the pacer, and it is now over two thousand three hundred and thirty years old.

Britain became a Roman province in the reign of Claudius, in the first part of the first century of the Christian era, and it continued under the Roman yoke until A.D. 426, when the troops were withdrawn to help Valentinian against the Huns, and never returned. When Julius Cæsar first invaded Britain, in the year B.C. 55, he found the inhabitants fierce and warlike and abundantly supplied with horses and war chariots. These chariots were driven with great daring and skill, and the fact was thus demonstrated that this kind of warfare was not a new thing to the Britons, and that they were not to be easily subdued. The next year he returned again, but the second seems to have been no more successful than the first expedition. But little is known of the extent of territory overrun or the result of these invasions beyond the fact that no settlement was made then, and none till about ninety years afterward, when under the reign of Claudius, a strong military colony was planted there and Britain became a Roman province. During these centuries of bondage we know practically nothing of the lives of the slaves and but little of their masters, except the remnants of military works for aggression and defence, and the magnificent roads they constructed where-ever they moved their armies. In relation to their horses, I will make a few extracts from a work published about the beginning of this century, by Mr. John Lawrence, a man of great research and intelligence, besides of a wide acquaintance with the practical affairs of the horse, and, I may add, altogether the most reliable writer of his period. He says:

“In forming the paces, if the colt was not naturally of a proud and lofty action, like the Spanish or Persian horses, wooden rollers and weights were bound to their pastern joints, which gave them the habit of lifting up their feet. This method, also, was practiced in teaching them the ambulatura, or amble (pace), perhaps universally the common traveling pace of the Romans.

“That natural and most excellent pace, the trot, seems to have been very little prized or attended to by the ancients, and was, indeed, by the Romans held in a kind of contempt, or aversion, as is demonstrated by the terms which served to describe it. A trotting horse was called by them _succussator_, or shaker, and sometimes _cruciator_, or tormentor, which bad terms, it may be presumed, were applied specially to those which in these days we dignify with the expressive appellation of ‘bone-setters.’”

The statuary of the early ages furnishes some excellent illustrations of the gait of the horse at that period of the world’s history. The four bronze horses on St. Mark’s in Venice are known throughout the world, and they are in the pacing attitude. The forefoot that is advanced is possibly a little too much elevated to strike the ground the same instant the hinder foot should strike it, but the whole action indicated is undoubtedly the lateral action. The date of these horses is lost in history, but it is supposed they were cast in Rome, about the beginning of the Christian era. Their capture in Rome and transfer to Constantinople, then their capture by the Venetians and transfer to Venice, next their capture by Napoleon and transfer to Paris, and then their restoration to Venice, are all matters of history.

William Stephanides, or Fitz Stephen, as he was called, a monk of Canterbury, was born in London, lived in the reigns of King Stephen, Henry II., and Richard I., and died 1191. He wrote a description of London in Latin, which was afterward translated by John Strype, and printed, from which I take the following extract:

“There is without one of the gates, immediately in the suburb, a certain smooth field (Smithfield) in name and reality. There every Friday, unless it be one of the more solemn festivals, is a noted show of well-bred horses exposed for sale. The earls, barons and knights who are at the time resident in the city, as well as most of the citizens, flock thither either to look or to buy. _It is pleasant to see the nags with their sleek and shining coats, smoothly ambling (pacing) along, raising and setting down, as it were, their feet on either side; in one part (of the field) are horses better adapted to the esquires; those whose pace is rougher, yet expeditious, lift up and set down, as it were, the two opposite fore and hind feet (trotting) together._”

After locating and describing the pacers in one part of the field and the trotters in another, Fitz Stephen goes on to take a look at the colts, then horses of burden, “strong and stout of limb,” and then their chargers in their galloping action. He next gives a very spirited description of the race, when the people raise a shout and all the other horses, cattle, etc., are cleared away, that the contestants may have an unobstructed field. It is a fact worthy of note that every English writer on the race horse, for the past century or two, has quoted a part of the above paragraph from Fitz Stephen as the first known and recorded instance of racing in England, but left one of the most important parts out. Even Mr. Whyte, one of the most prominent of modern writers, in his “History of the British Turf,” seems to have followed some other writer, in the omission; or possibly, as he never had seen a pacer in England, he concluded that Fitz Stephen had only imagined that he saw, in one part of the field, horses moving at the lateral gait. In the paragraph quoted above, I have italicised that part of the description which English writers on turf subjects have omitted with remarkable uniformity.

This seems to have been the period in which the pacing horse reached the highest point in official and popular appreciation, at least since the days of the Roman occupation of Britain. In speaking of this period, Mr. Lawrence says: “All descriptions of saddle horses were taught to amble” (that did not amble naturally), “and that most excellent and useful gait, the trot, was almost entirely disused.” In addition to the evidence of Fitz Stephen, we have that furnished by the Great Seals of a succession of sovereigns commencing with Richard I., and continuing to Elizabeth. These seals represent a knight in armor, mounted on a pacing horse in action, and perhaps the most conspicuous, at least the clearest, impression that has come down to us is that of King John, used at Runnymede, when he yielded to the demands of his barons and granted the Magna Charta. This act secured the liberties of the Anglo-Saxon race for all time and in all climes.

Mr. Thomas Blundeville was, probably, the first writer on the horse who undertook to publish a book in the English language on that subject. This book, entitled “The Art of Riding,” was merely a translation from the Italian, with some brief observations on English horses added to it. The first edition, it is said, was published in London, 1558, the year that Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne. The only edition which I have been able to find in the British Museum is that of 1580, in old English black letter. In quoting from the old authors of that period I will seek to avoid confusion by using the modern orthography. In speaking of the horses of his day he says:

“Some men would have a breed of great trotting horses meet for the war and to serve in the field. Some others again would have a breed of ambling horses of a mean stature for to journey and travel by the way. Some, again, would have a race of swift runners to run for wagers or to gallop the buck, or to serve for such like exercise for pleasure. But the plain countryman would have a breed only for draft or burthen.

“The Irish Hobbie is a pretty fine horse, having a good head and a body indifferently well proportioned, saving that many of them be slender and pin-buttocked. They are tender-mouthed, nimble, pleasant and apt to be taught, and for the most part they be amblers and thus very meet for the saddle and to travel by the way. Yea, and the Irishmen, both with darts and light spears, do use to skirmish with them in the field, and many of them do prove to that use very well, by means they be so light and swift.

“Let those mares that shall be put to the stallion be of a high stature, strongly made, large and fair, and have a trotting pace as the mares of Flanders and some of our own mares be. For it is not meet, for divers reasons, that horses of [service stallions] should amble. But if any man seeks to have a race of ambling horses, to travel by the way, then I would wish his stallion to be a fair jennet of Spain, or at least a bastard jennet, or else a fair Irish ambling Hobbie; and the mare to be also a bastard jennet, bred here within this realm, having an ambling pace, or else some other of our ambling mares, so that the mare be well proportioned. And if any man desires to have swift runners let him choose a horse of Barbary or a Turk to be his stallion, and let the mare, which shall be put unto him, be like of stature and making unto him, so nigh as may be, for most commonly, such sire and dam such colt.”

It is evident Mr. Blundeville was not much of a friend of the pacer, but as an honest writer he considers things as he finds them. Unfortunately he throws no light upon just what he means by the term “Spanish Jennet,” and a definition of that term, as used in the sixteenth century, would throw much light on passages from following writers in later periods. Everybody knows he was a small Spanish saddle horse, but nobody knows just what gait he took. To use Blundevilles own language, “The pace of the jennet of Spain is neither trot nor amble, but a comely kind of going like the Turke.”

Mr. Gervaise Markham published several revised and enlarged editions of his work on the horse, the last of which I have been able to examine being printed in London, 1607, the same year the colony was planted at Jamestown, Virginia. In this edition he devotes nine short chapters or paragraphs to the pacer. In quoting from him I will again use the modern methods of spelling. He says:

“First to speak of ambling in general. It is that smooth and easy pace which the labor and industry of an ingenious brain hath found out to relieve the aged, sick, impotent and diseased persons, to make women undertake journeying and so by their community to grace society; to make great men try the ease of travel, more willing to thrust themselves into the offices of the commonwealth, and to do the poor both relief and service. It makes them when necessity, or as the proverb is, “when the devil drives,” not to be vexed with the two torments, a troubled mind and a tormented body. To conclude, ambling was found out for the general ease of the whole world, as long as there is either pleasure, commerce or trade amongst the people. Now for the manner of the motion and the difference betwixt it and trotting. It cannot be described more plainly than I have set down in my former treatise; which is that it is the taking up of both legs together upon one side and so carrying them smoothly along to set them down upon the ground even together, and in that motion he must lift and wind up his fore foot somewhat high from the ground, but his hinder foot he must no more than take from the ground, as it were, sweep it close to the earth. Now, by taking up both his legs together on one side, I mean he must take up his right fore foot and his right hinder foot. For, as in the contrary pace, when a horse trots he takes up his feet crosswise, as the left hinder foot and the right fore foot, etc.”

Mr. Markham, in his edition of 1607, then goes on in six or eight chapters acknowledging that many foals pace naturally, and to show how the foal may be trained to pace. His methods are very cruel, in many cases, and very crude throughout; but it clearly demonstrates the fact that in the sixteenth century the pace was a very general gait among English horses. In these chapters we find the toe weight first introduced as well as the trammels or hopples. The most striking fact brought out in these chapters is the discovery that more than three hundred years ago Englishmen were using the same devices to convert trotters into pacers that we are now using to convert pacers into trotters. He takes notice that Mr. Blundeville had advised those who wished to breed amblers to select a Spanish jennet or an Irish Hobbie, and objects to the former on the grounds that their paces are weak and uncertain. From this I conclude that the gait of the jennet, whatever it might have been, was not a habit of action fixed in the breed, and that its transmission was doubtful.

Mr. Markham then goes on further to explain the mechanism of the trot and the pace and incidentally introduces the rack or single-foot action, which, I think, is the first time I have found it in any English writer. He says:

“The nearer a horse taketh his limbs from the ground, the opener and evener and the shorter he treadeth, the better will be his pace, and the contrary declares much imperfection. If you buy a horse for pleasure the amble is the best, in which you observe that he moves both his legs on one side together neat with complete deliberation, for if he treads too short he is apt to stumble, if too large to cut and if shuffling or rowling he does it slovenly, and besides rids no ground. If your horse be designed for hunting, a racking pace is most expedient, which little differs from the amble, only is more active and nimble, whereby the horse observes due motion, but you must not force him too eagerly, lest being in confusion he lose all knowledge of what you design him to, and so handle his legs confusedly. The gallop is requisite for race horses.... If he gallop round and raise his fore legs he is then said to gallop strongly, but not capable of much speed, and is fitter for the war than racing.”

In 1667 the Duke of Newcastle published his famous work on the horse under the title, “A New Method and Extraordinary Invention to Dress Horses, and Work them According to Nature and also To Perfect Nature by the Subtilty of Art which was Never Found Out, but by the Thrice Noble, High, and Puissant Prince, William Cavendish, Duke, Marquess, and Earl of Newcastle, etc., etc.,” followed with twelve other titles and offices. The book was dedicated to “His Most Sacred Majesty, Charles the Second,” and is pretentious and magniloquent in its letter press and its make-up as it is in its title. In this work there is a great deal of bad English, some sense, and much nonsense, all mixed up with a strut of superiority that His Grace, no doubt, felt justified in enjoying after his long years of beggary in Antwerp. In giving the _natural_ gaits of the horse he places the walk first, then the trot and next the amble, which he describes very minutely as follows:

“For an amble he removes both his legs of a side, as, for example, take the far side, he removes his fore leg and his hinder leg at one time, whilst the other two legs of the near side stand still; and when those legs are on the ground, which he first removed, at the same time they are upon the ground the other side, which is the nearer side, removes fore leg and hinder leg on that side, and the other legs of the far side stand still. Thus an amble removes both his legs of a side and every remove changes sides; two of a side in the air and two upon the ground at the same time. And this is a perfect amble.”

The duke seems to have been somewhat profuse in the use of words, and not very happy in his use of them, but after all we know just what he means. The description of the movement is that of the clean-cut pace, and our object in introducing it here is not only to show that the pace was then a well-known and natural gait in England, but also to show that the _pace_ and the _amble_ are one. In itself, the word “amble” is a better word than “pace,” for the latter is often used in referring to a rate of speed without regard to the particular gait taken by the horse, but in this country it is now universally understood to apply to the lateral motion, and it would not be wise at this day to attempt to change it. There is an undefined supposition in the mind of some people that the amble is something different from the pace, that it is a slower and less pronounced gait, and hence we are often told a given horse did not pace, but “he ambled off.” In all that we have found in the writings of the past, and in all that I have seen with my own eyes, I have not been able to discover that there is any distinction between the amble and the pace. The only distinction is not in the gait itself, but in the fact that our ancestors, four hundred years ago, used the word “amble” to express precisely the same thing that their descendants now express by the word “pace.” The only sense in which the word “amble” is used among the horsemen of this country is to describe a kind of slow, incipient pace that many horses, both runners and trotters, show when recalled for a fresh start in scoring for a race. This probably indicates, whether in the case of a runner or a trotter, that somewhere, not very far removed, there is a pacing inheritance, and this incipient amble, as it is sometimes called, comes from that inheritance. It is also possible that it may arise from the excitement of the start and the confusion consequent upon the contest.

At the close of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, about the beginning of the seventeenth century, the pacing horse of England was at the highest point of his utility and fame. He was the horse for the race course, he was the horse for the hunting field, and he was the horse for the saddle. He was able to beat King James’ Arabian, and with the few Barbs that had then been brought in, the historian informs us, he was able to hold his own. There were two tribes of his congeners, the Galloway and the Irish Hobbie, the former from Southwestern Scotland and the north of England, and the latter from Ireland. These tribes were chiefly pacers, and not a few of them were distinguished as running horses. The Bald Galloway, as he was called, was a grand representative of his tribe. He was simply a native pony with a bald face, and he was a capital runner for his day, and a number of his get were distinguished runners. True, he is tricked out in the Stud Book with a pedigree, wholly fictitious, and that nobody ever heard of for a hundred years after he was foaled, but that did not prevent his daughter Roxana, when bred to Godolphin Arabian, from producing two of his greatest sons, Lath and Cade. This topic, however, has already been considered in the chapter on the English Race Horse. The Galloways were very famous as pacers in their day, and it seems they were about the last remnants of the pacing tribes to be found in England. It seems, also, that long after they had ceased to be known on the other side their descendants were still known by the same designation in Virginia. From the history of the times, it appears that a wealthy Irish gentleman invested quite largely in shipping live stock to Virginia, and there can hardly be a doubt that his shipments included some of the Irish Hobbies.

While the opening of the seventeenth century witnessed the supremacy of the English pacer, in the uses and enjoyments of the lives of the people, during the whole course of its succeeding years he was battling for his existence, and at its close he was nearly extinct. At the close of Queen Anne’s reign there were still a few Galloways left, but in the early Georges there were no longer any survivors, and Great Britain was without a pacer in the whole realm. The extinction of a race of horses that had been the delight of the kings, queens, nobility, and gentry of a great nation for many centuries is, perhaps, without a precedent in the history of any civilized people, and the causes which produced this wonderful result are well worthy of careful study. In looking into these causes we must consider the facts as we find them.

As we have no guide, either historic, linguistic or ethnographic, by which we can certainly determine the blood of the original inhabitants of the British Isles, it is not remarkable that we should be in profound ignorance as to the blood of their horses. They were, doubtless, like their masters, of mixed origin, and through all the centuries their appearance would indicate that they have been bred and reared in a nomadic or semi-wild state, in which only the toughest and fleetest had survived. A good many years ago I met with a theory, advanced by somebody, that the original horse stock of Britain came from the North, but there were no reasons given to support it. I have no hesitation in accepting this theory, as far as it distinguishes between the North and the South, for some Northern countries produce vast numbers of natural pacers, as Russia, for instance, but I have never learned that any Southern country produced pacers. Certainly the shaft horse of the Russian drosky has been a flying pacer for generations, and great numbers of them are produced in Russia, especially in the eastern part of the empire. As these pacers are produced in a natural and semi-wild state, it must be conceded that habits of action have been inherited from their ancestors in the remote past. Historically, we know that the Phœnicians, when they ruled the trade of the world, supplied the whole of the northern coast of Africa, from Egypt to Algiers, and the southern coast of Spain, with horses, about a thousand years before the Christian era. Now, the horses of those regions are the descendants of the original stock carried there by the Phœnicians, and we know their habit of action is not that of the pacer. Hence the conclusion that the English pacer came from the North and not from the South. In speaking of the difference in the gaits of Northern and Southern horses, Mr. John Lawrence specifies the horses of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, etc., and says: “They are round made, but with clean heads and limbs; their best pace is the trot (or pace), which indeed is the characteristic pace of the Northern, as the gallop is of the Southern horse.” Other writers speak of the trot (or pace) as common to Northern horses, but as not common to Southern horses. Now, as all Southern horses do trot, and as these writers could not fail to know that they trotted, at some rate of speed, we must construe their terms so as to be consistent with plain, common sense. There was something in the “trot” of the Northern horse altogether different from the “trot” of the Southern horse that rendered his habit of action more conspicuous, probably by his higher rate of speed, but still more probably by the peculiar mechanism of his lateral action. If we insert the word “pace” instead of the word “trot,” the meaning of these old writers becomes very plain and in harmony with other known facts. Neither does it militate against the theory that the inhabitants of Britain may have secured their original horse stock from the Phœnician merchants; but if they did, it seems quite evident that at a later date they supplemented their supply from the pacing element from the North.

At the close of the fifteenth century Polydore Virgil, an Italian ecclesiastic, came to England and wrote a descriptive history of the British Islands in Latin, which was published about 1509. Part of this history was very clumsily translated about the time the English language began to assume its present form in literature and learning. In speaking of the horses of the country, he seems to have been greatly surprised with the pacers, and treats them as a curiosity. He says: “A great company of their horses do not trot, but amble, and yet neither trotters nor amblers are strongest, as strength is not always incident to that which is most gentle or less courageous.” It will be observed that these observations were made nearly four hundred years ago, and that the surprise of the Italian was not at merely seeing a few pacers which he had never seen in his own country, but that “the great company” of English horses were pacers. As I have here given an instance showing the surprise of an Italian at finding pacers, I will follow it with another showing the surprise of an Englishman at not finding any pacers. The chaplain of the Earl of Cumberland, on his several voyages of discovery in South America and the West India Islands, about 1596, made elaborate note of what he saw and learned of the new countries which the English then visited for the first time. These notes passed into the hands of that wonderfully prolific writer, or rather compiler, Samuel Purchas, from whose fourth volume, page 1171, the following paragraph is taken:

“And I wot not how that kind of beast [speaking of cattle] hath specially a liking to these Southerly parts of the world above their horses, none of which I have seen by much so tall and goodly as ordinarily they are in England; they were well made and well mettled, and good store there are of them, but methinks there are many things wanting in them which are ordinary in our English light horses. They are all trotters, nor do I remember that I have seen above one ambler, and that was a little fiddling nag. But it may be if there were better breeders they would have better and more useful increase, yet they are good enough for hackneys, to which use only almost they are employed.”

The surprise of the Englishman at finding no pacers in South America seems to have been as great as that of the Italian at finding so many of them in England, one hundred years earlier. These horses were strictly Spanish, and probably were descended from those brought from Palos in 1493 by Columbus, the first horses that ever crossed the Atlantic. The “one little fiddling nag” that showed some kind of a pacing gait may have been of English blood and captured from some English expedition, several of which were unfortunate; or his failure to trot may have been the result of an injury. It should not be forgotten that in that period every sea captain was out for what he could capture, and this was especially the case as between the English and the Spanish. These are the outlines of the principal points of evidence that the pacing habit of action came from the North and not from the South. That there were pacers in both Greece and Rome before the Christian era, and perhaps later, there can be no doubt, for they were both overrun and devastated again and again by the hordes of Northern Barbarians, bringing their flocks and their herds and their families, as well as their horses, with them.

This question naturally suggests itself here: “If the English pacer had been the popular favorite of the English people for so many centuries, how did it come that he and his habit of action had been so completely wiped out in one century, the seventeenth?” This question might be answered in very few words, by saying the people thought they were getting something better to put in his place. In reaching this conclusion I will not pretend to say the judgment of the people was not right, that is, if they exercised any judgment in the case. “Jamie the Scotsman” when on the throne set the fashion in the direction of foreign blood by paying the enormous price of five hundred pounds for the Markham Arabian. The Duke of Newcastle, when he was young, had personally seen this horse, and while he thought he was a true Arabian, he described him as a very ordinary horse in his size and form, and an entire failure as a race horse. It seems that any average native pacer could outrun him, but he carried the badge of royalty, and that was sufficient to make him fashionable, as he was not only the king’s horse, but was himself a royal Arabian. The weak place in the character of James I., in addition to his intolerable pedantry, was his inordinate ambition to be considered the wisest sovereign who ever sat upon a throne since the days of Solomon. His courtiers, nobility, and all who approached him understood his weakness, and a little quiet praise of the great superiority of the Arabian blood in the horse, over all other breeds and varieties, was always grateful to the monarch, for he was the original discoverer and patentee of that blood. Then and there, in order to praise the wisdom of a foolish king, a foolish fashion grew into a foolish notion that has afflicted all England from that day to this. No humbug of either ancient or modern times has had so long a run and so wide a range as the miserable fallacy “that all excellence in the horse comes from the Arabian.” Notwithstanding the thousand tests that have been made and the thousand failures that have invariably followed, from the time of King James to the present day, there are still men writing books and magazine articles on the assumption that “all excellence in the horse comes from the Arabian,” without ever having devoted an honest hour to the study of the question as to whether this is a truth or a fallacy. This craze for Arabian blood was the primary cause of the extinction of the pacer, and this craze was so strong in its influence that when a foreign horse was brought in, no difference from what country, if he were of the lighter type he was called an Arabian and so advertised in order to secure the patronage of breeders. Horses brought from the African coast were invariably classed as Arabians, notwithstanding they and their ancestors were in Africa more than a thousand years before there were any horses in Arabia; and the same may be said of Spain. But as this line of inquiry has already been considered in another chapter, I will get back to the immediate topic.

The process of breeding out the pacer did not commence in real earnest until the middle of the seventeenth century, when the Stuarts regained the sovereignty of Great Britain in the person of Charles II. Released from the restraints of Puritan rule, the Restoration brought with it a carnival of immorality and vice, for the court and the courtiers set the fashion and the people followed. As the breeding interest of the period of which we now speak has already been considered in the chapter on the English Race Horse, I will not further enlarge upon it. The light, or running and hunting, horses of England of that day were not all pacers, but they were all of the same type and the same blood, hence when I speak of the pacers I include their congeners. They were small—less than fourteen hands high—and not generally handsome and attractive. In general utility they were ahead of the importations, and doubtless many of them could run as fast and as far as the foreign horses, but the foreigners had the advantage in size, especially the Turks and the Neapolitans; besides this, they were more uniformly handsome and attractive in their form and carriage. It is also probable that the outcross from the strangers to invigorate the stock was needed and resulted in the increase of the size of the progeny. This latter suggestion is inferential and has been sustained by many similar experiences, but without this as a start it would be exceedingly difficult to account for the rapid increase in the height of the English race horse. It is certainly true that the chief aim of the English breeder of that day was to increase the size, without losing symmetry and style, and if he found that foreign upon native blood gave him a start in that direction, he was wise in the commingling. Another consideration, growing out of the rural economy of the people, doubtless had a very wide influence in the direction of wiping out the pacer, in this period of transition. Long journeys in the saddle became less frequent, good roads began to appear and vehicles on wheels took the place of the saddler and the pack horse. To get greater weight and strength for this service, recourse was had to crosses with the larger and courser breeds, and through these channels have come the giants and the pigmies of the modern race course. Under the changed conditions of travel and transportation it is not remarkable that the people should have been willing to see their long-time favorites disappear, for it is known to every man of experience that the pace is not a desirable gait for harness work. No doubt the pacer is as strong as the trotter of the same size and make-up, but in his smooth, gliding motion there is a suggestion of weakness communicated to his driver that is never suggested by the bold, bounding trotter. The antagonism between the pacers and the new horses of Saracenic origin was irreconcilable and one or the other had to yield. As the management of the contest was in the hands of the master the result could be easily foreseen, for if one cross failed, another followed and then another, till the Saracenic blood was completely dominant in eliminating the lateral and implanting the diagonal action in its stead.

As no home-bred pacer, of any type or breed, has been seen in England for nearly two hundred years, it is not remarkable that Englishmen of good average intelligence, for the past two or three generations, have lived and died supposing they knew all about horses, and yet did not know there had ever been such a thing in England as a breed of pacing horses. When, some eighteen or twenty years ago, I called the attention of Mr. H. F. Euren, compiler of the Hackney Stud Book, to the early English pacers as a most inviting field in which to look for the origin of the “Norfolk Trotters,” he was surprised to learn that such horses had existed in England, but he went to work and gathered up many important facts that appear in the first volume of the Hackney compilation. Many of these facts, but in less detail, had already appeared, from time to time, in _Wallace’s Monthly_, but Mr. Euren’s was the first modern English publication to place them before English readers. From this prompting, Mr. Euren did well, but we must go back a little to see how this subject was treated by English writers of horse books, who wrote without any promptings from this side.

Mr. William Youatt was a voluminous writer on domestic animals, and at one time was looked upon as the highest authority on the horse, both in England and in this country. He seems to have been a practitioner of veterinary surgery, and from the number of volumes which he published successfully, he must have been a man of ability and education. There can be no question that he knew a great deal—quite too much to know anything well. The first edition of his work on the horse was published in 1831, and soon after its appearance several publishing houses in this country seized upon it as very valuable, and each one of them soon had an edition of it before the public. It purports to have been written at the instance of “The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.” This declaration was a good thing, in a commercial view, and no doubt it did much in extending the circulation of the book. Without tarrying to note several minor historical blunders, I will go direct to one relating to the gait of the horse, which is now under consideration. In his fourth edition, page 535, he incidentally discusses the mechanism of the pace, and after speaking of the Elgin Marbles, to which I have referred at the beginning of this chapter, and after conceding that two of the four horses are not galloping but pacing, he says:

“Whether this was then the mode of trotting or not, it is certain that it is never seen to occur in nature in the present day; and, indeed, it appears quite inconsistent with the necessary balancing of the body, and was, therefore, more probably an error of the artist.”

This remark is simply amazing in an author who pretentiously undertakes to instruct his countrymen in the history of the horse when he knows nothing about that history. If he had gone back only twenty-two years, “Old John Lawrence,” in his splendid quarto, would have told him about the pacer. If he had gone back one hundred and sixty years, the Duke of Newcastle would have explained to him the complete and perfect mechanism of the pacing gait. If he had gone still further back and examined Gervaise Markham, Blundeville, Polydore Virgil, and Fitz Stephen the Monk, of the twelfth century, any and all of them would have explained to him the pacing habit of action and shown him that for many successive centuries the pacing horse was the popular and fashionable horse of the realm. If Mr. Youatt had lived to see John R. Gentry pace a mile in 2:00½; Robert J. in 2:01½, and dozens of others in less than 2:10, he might have changed his mind and concluded that it was possible, after all, for a horse to travel at the lateral gait without toppling over. From Mr. Youatt and a few other modern English authors, most of our American writers on the horse have derived what little mental pabulum they thought they needed, and thus an error at the fountain has been carried into all the ramifications of our horse literature. Only two or three years ago a very intelligent gentleman, who had attained great eminence as a veterinary surgeon, especially for his knowledge and treatment of the horse’s foot, seriously and in good faith stoutly maintained that the pacing habit of action was merely the result of an abnormal condition of the foot, and that all pacers would trot just as soon as their feet were put in the right shape. We must not laugh at this wild notion, for it is really no worse than Mr. Youatt’s doubting whether it was possible for a horse to balance himself at the lateral motion. Neither gentleman seemed to know anything about the fact that it was a matter of inheritance, and that the lateral habit of action had come down by transmission through all the generations for a period of more than two thousand years. It is hardly necessary to say that the gentleman who was so confident that the pace was merely the result of the abnormal condition of the feet brought his notions about the pacer from across the water. He was an Anglo-American, and could make a pacer into a trotter in a jiffy, by using the paring-knife. He was an intelligent man and a skillful veterinarian, but there were no pacers in England and there should be none here. Toward the close of the chapter on The Colonial Horses of Virginia, will be found the observations of an English tourist in 1795-96 who is very certain that there is some mistake about the pacer, and will not be convinced there are any, unless they are artificially created. Having now completed what I had to say about the old English pacer, it is next in order to consider his descendants in this country and the relations they bear to the American trotter.