CHAPTER XIV.

THE AMERICAN PACER AND HIS RELATIONS TO THE AMERICAN TROTTER.

Regulations against stallions at large—American pacers taken to the West Indies—Narragansett pacers; many foolish and groundless theories about their origin—Dr. McSparran on the speed of the pacer—Mr. Updike’s testimony—Mr. Hazard and Mr. Enoch Lewis—Exchanging meetings with Virginia—Watson’s Annals—Matlack and Acrelius—Rip Van Dam’s horse—Cooper’s evidence—Cause of disappearance—Banished to the frontier—First intimation that the pace and the trot were essentially one gait—How it was received—Analysis of the two gaits—Pelham, Highland Maid, Jay-Eye-See, Blue Bull—The pacer forces himself into publicity—Higher rate of speed—Pacing races very early—Quietly and easily developed—Comes to his speed quickly—His present eminence not permanent—The gamblers carried him there—Will he return to his former obscurity?

In the several chapters devoted to “Colonial Horse History” will be found all the leading facts that I have been able to glean from the early sources of information. With the exceptions of the horses brought from Utrecht in Holland to New Amsterdam (New York), two shiploads that sailed out of the Zuider Zee and landed at Salem, Massachusetts, and those brought from Sweden by the colonists that settled on the Delaware, all the early importations came from England. As much the larger number of those from England and Sweden were pacers, the breeds and habits of action were soon mixed up, as those who had no pacers wanted pacers for the saddle, and those who wanted more size, regardless of the gait, were always ready to supply their want by an exchange of their saddle horses for more size. The Dutch horses were certainly something over fourteen hands and the English and Swedish horses were perhaps nearer thirteen than fourteen hands. The colonists from the first, and from one end of the land to the other, seem to have appreciated the importance of increasing the size and strength of their horse stock, and this was very hard to do under the conditions then prevailing of allowing their horses to roam at large. Hence, stringent regulations were adopted in all the colonies against permitting immature entire colts and stallions under size to wander where they pleased. It is doubtful whether these regulations were any more effective than those of Henry VIII., for while there was some increase, it was hardly perceptible until after the close of the colonial days. The real increase did not commence till the farmers had provided themselves with facilities for keeping their breeding stock at home.

It is very evident from the statistics of size and gait, as given in the chapters referred to above, that our forefathers wisely selected the most compact, strong and hardy animals they could find in England as the type best adapted to fight their way against the hardships of a life in the wilderness of the new world. There have been some attempts, wholly fanciful and baseless, to trace importations from other countries, outside of those mentioned above, but all such attempts have proven wholly imaginary and worse than futile. In less than twenty years after the New England colonies received their first supply they commenced shipping horses by the cargo to Barbadoes and other West India Islands. This trade was cultivated, extended to all the islands, and continued during the remainder of the seventeenth and practically the whole of the eighteenth century. The pacers of the American colonies were exceedingly popular and sought after by the Spanish as well as the Dutch and English islands. Indeed, the planters of Cuba alone carried away at high prices nearly all the pacers that New England could produce. They knew nothing about pacers for the saddle until they had tried them and then they would have nothing else. These continuous raids of the Spaniards of the West Indies upon the pacers of New England, and Rhode Island especially, has been assigned, by the local historians of that State as one of the principal causes of the decadence and practically final disappearance of the Narragansett pacer from the seat of his triumphs and his fame. It is just to remark here, in passing, that if there had been pacers among the horses of Spain, the Spanish dependencies would have secured their supplies from the mother country and not have come to Rhode Island and paid fabulous prices for them.

As all the pacing traditions of this country to-day point to the horses of Narragansett Bay as the source from which our modern pacers have derived their speed, we must give some attention to the various theories that have been advanced as to the origin of the Narragansett horse. In time past, and extending back to a period “whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary,” the horse world has been cursed with a class of men who have always been ready to invent and put in circulation the most marvelous and incredible stories about the origin of every remarkable horse that has appeared. Some of these wiseacres have maintained that the original Narragansett pacer was caught wild in the woods by the first settlers on Narragansett Bay, while others (and this seems to be of Canadian origin) have insisted that when being brought to this country a storm struck the ship and the horse was thrown overboard, and after nine days he was found off the coast of Newfoundland quietly eating rushes on a sand bar, where he was rescued and brought into Narragansett Bay. This story of the marine horse probably had its origin in the experiences of Rip Van Dam, which will be narrated further on. Another representation, coming this time from a very reputable source, has been made as to the origin of the Narragansett horse, and as many, no doubt, have accepted it as true, I must give it such consideration as its prominence demands. Mr. I. T. Hazard, a representative of the very old and prominent Hazard family of Rhode Island, in a letter to the Rev. Mr. Updike, makes the following statement:

“My grandfather, Governor Robinson, introduced the famous saddle horse, the Narragansett pacer, known in the last century over all the civilized parts of North America and the West Indies, from whence they have lately been introduced into England, as a ladies’ saddle horse, under the name of the Spanish Jennet. Governor Robinson imported the original from Andalusia, in Spain, and the raising of them for the West India market was one of the objects of the early planters of this country. My grandfather, Robert Hazard, raised about a hundred of them annually, and often loaded two vessels a year with them, and other products of his farm, which sailed direct from the South Ferry to the West Indies, where they were in great demand.”

This theory of the origin of the Narragansett came down to Mr. Hazard as a tradition, no doubt, but like a thousand other traditions it has nothing to sustain it. Opposed to it there are two clearly ascertained facts, either one of which is wholly fatal to it. In the first place, there were no pacers in Andalusia or any other part of Spain, and in the second place, these horses, according to official data, were the leading item of export from Rhode Island in 1680, and Governor Robinson was not born till about 1693. As impossibilities admit of no argument, I will not add another word to this “Andalusian” origin tradition, except to say that a hundred years later, when the pacing dam of Sherman Morgan was taken from Cranston, Rhode Island, up into Vermont, she was called a “Spanish mare,” because Mr. Hazard had said the original Narragansett had come from Spain. The story of the descendants of the Narragansetts having been carried from the West Indies to England, and there introduced under the name of the Spanish Jennet as a lady’s saddle horse, is wholly imaginative. The Spanish Jennet, whatever its gait may have been, was well known in England many years before the first horse was brought to any of the American colonies. (See extracts from Blundeville and Markham in Chapter XII.)

After several years of fruitless search for some trace of the early importations of horses into the colony of Rhode Island, I have reached the conclusion that probably no such importations were ever made. The colony of Massachusetts Bay commenced importing horses and other live stock from England in 1629, and continued to do so for several years and until they were fully supplied, as stated above. In 1640 a shipload of horses were exported to the Barbadoes, and it was about this time that Rhode Island began to assume an organized existence. Her people were largely made up of refugees from the religious intolerance of the other New England colonies, and they brought their families and effects, including their horses, with them. The blood of the Narragansett pacer, therefore, was not different from the blood of the pacers of the other colonies, but the development of his speed by the establishment of a pacing course and the offering of valuable prizes, naturally brought the best and the fastest horses to this colony and from the best and fastest they built up a breed that became famous throughout all the inhabited portions of the Western Hemisphere. The race track, with the valuable prizes it offered and the emulation it aroused, was what did it. As the question of origin is thus settled in accordance with what is known of history and the natural order of things, and as the Narragansett is the great tribe representing the lateral action then and since, we must consider such details of history as have come down to us.

The Rev. James McSparran, D.D., was sent out by the London Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, to take charge of an Episcopal church that had been planted some years before in Rhode Island. He arrived in 1721, and lived till 1759. He was an Irishman, and appears to have been somewhat haughty and irascible in his temperament and was disposed to find fault with the climate, the currency, the people, and pretty much everything he came in contact with. He was a man of observation, and during the thirty-eight years he spent in ministering to the spiritual wants of his flock, he was not unmindful of what was passing around him, and made many notes and reflections on the various phases of life as they presented themselves to his mind, and especially on the products and industries of the colony. These notes and observations he wrote out, and they were published in Dublin in 1753, under the title of “America Dissected.”

His writings do not discover that he was a man of very ardent piety, but he was honored as a good man while he lived, and was buried under the altar he had served so long. His duties sometimes called him away into Virginia, and, in speaking of the great distance of one parish from another, he uses the following language:

“To remedy this (the distance), as the whole province, between the mountains, two hundred miles up, and the sea, is all a champaign, and without stones, they have plenty of a small sort of horses, the best in the world, like the little Scotch Galloways; and ’tis no extraordinary journey to ride from sixty to seventy miles or more in a day. I have often, but upon larger pacing horses, rode fifty, nay, sixty miles a day, even here in New England, where the roads are rough, stony and uneven.”

The reverend gentleman seems to assume that his readers knew the Scotch Galloways were pacers, and with this explanation his observations are very plain. He makes no distinction between the Virginia horse and his congener of Rhode Island except that of size, in which the latter had the advantage. In speaking of the products of Rhode Island he says:

“The produce of this colony is principally butter and cheese, fat cattle, wool, and fine horses, which are exported to all parts of English America. They are remarkable for fleetness and swift pacing; _and I have seen some of them pace a mile in a little more than two minutes, and a good deal less than three_.”

When I first read this sentence in the reverend doctor’s book I confess I was not prepared to accept it in any other light than that of a wild enthusiast, who knew but little of the force of the language he used. To talk about horses pacing, a hundred and fifty years ago, in a little more than two minutes and a good deal less than three, appeared to be simply monstrous. The language evidently means, according to all fair rules of construction, that the mile was performed nearer two minutes than three, or in other words, considerably below two minutes and thirty seconds. I doubt not my readers will hesitate, and perhaps refuse, to accept such a performance, just as I did myself till I had carefully weighed not only the character of the author of the statement, but the circumstances that seemed to support it. If the learned divine had known no more of the world and its ways than many of his profession, I would have concluded he was not a competent judge of speed; but he was a man of affairs, and knew perfectly well just what he was saying. The question naturally arises here as to what opportunities or facilities the doctor had for timing those pacers of a hundred and fifty years ago. In a note appended to the above extract by Mr. Updike, the editor of the work, I find the following:

“The breed of horses called Narragansett pacers, once so celebrated for fleetness, endurance and speed, has become extinct. These horses were highly valued for the saddle, and transported the rider with great pleasantness and sureness of foot. The pure bloods could not trot at all. Formerly they had pace-races. Little Neck Beach, in South Kingston, of one mile in length, was the race course. A silver tankard was the prize, and high bets were otherwise made on speed. Some of these prize tankards were remaining a few years ago. Traditions respecting the swiftness of these horses are almost incredible.”

The facts stated by Mr. Updike in this note are corroborated from other sources, and may be accepted as true. These were the opportunities and facilities the doctor had for holding his watch, and nobody will doubt they were sufficient to enable him to be a competent witness. In connection with this subject, and as another footnote, Mr. Updike introduces a letter from Mr. I. T. Hazard, which brings out another very curious fact in the history of the pacer. The Hazard family was very eminent in Rhode Island, and many of its members have occupied positions of high honor and responsibility for several generations. The date of the letter is not given, and we may infer it may have been written fifty years ago, or perhaps more. Mr. Hazard says:

“Within ten years one of my aged neighbors, Enoch Lewis, since deceased, informed me he had been to Virginia as one of the riding boys, to return a similar visit of the Virginians in that section, in a contest on the turf; and that such visits were common with the racing sportsmen of Narragansett and Virginia, when he was a boy. Like the old English country gentlemen, from whom they were descended, they were a horse-racing, fox-hunting, feasting generation.”

This paragraph from Mr. Hazard’s pen has been the subject of very deliberate consideration. The first promptings of my judgment were to doubt and reject it, especially on account of the absence of date to the letter, and of the remote period in which Mr. Enoch Lewis must have visited Virginia. Another question, as to why we have not this information from any other source except Mr. Hazard, presented itself with no inconsiderable force. After viewing the matter in all its bearings I am forced to concede that it is likely to be true. These visits must have taken place before the Revolution, and from the construction we are able to place upon the dates, this was not impossible. It is a fact that I do not hesitate to announce that before the Revolution racing in all its forms was more universally indulged in as an amusement than it ever has been since. This was before the days of newspapers, and all we can possibly know of the sporting events of that period we must gather up from the detached fragments that have come down to us by tradition. There was a strong bond of sympathy and friendship between the followers of Dr. McSparran in Rhode Island, surrounded as they were by Puritans, and their co-religionists in Virginia. They were accustomed to maritime life, and had abundance of vessels fitted up for the shipment of horses and other live stock to foreign ports. To take a number of their fastest pacers on board one of their sloops and sail for Virginia would not have been considered much of an adventure. These visits were not only occasions of pleasure and festivity, with the incidental profits of winning purses and bets, but they were a most successful means of advertising the Narragansett pacer; and through these means alone the market was opened, as Dr. McSparran expresses it, in all parts of British America. When we consider the widespread fame of these Rhode Island horses, and that there were no other means by which they could have achieved it, except by their actual performances, we are forced to the conclusion that they were carried long distances, and in many directions, for purely sporting purposes. That these visits would result in the transfer of a good number of the best and fastest horses from Narragansett to Virginia would be a natural sequence, and thus, in after years, we might look for a strong infusion of Narragansett blood in the Virginian pacing-horse.

It appears to be a law of our civilization that each generation produces somebody who, out of pure love for the curious and forgotten, devotes the best years of his life to hunting up old things that have well-nigh slipped away from the memory of man. In this class Mr. John F. Watson stands conspicuous in what he has done for Philadelphia and New York. In 1830 he published a work entitled “Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania,” in two volumes, and among all the antiquated manners and habits that he again brings to our knowledge, he has something to say about the horse of an early day:

“The late very aged T. Matlack, Esq., was passionately fond of races in his youth. He told me of his remembrances about Race Street. In his early days the woods were in commons, having several straggling forest trees still remaining there, and the circular course ranging through those trees. He said all genteel horses were pacers. A trotting-horse was deemed a base breed. These Race Street races were mostly pace-races. His father and others kept pacing stallions for propagating the breed.”

Mr. Watson further remarks, on the same subject: “Thomas Bradford, Esq., in telling me of the recollections of the races, says he was told that the earliest races were scrub and pace-races on the ground now used as Race Street.”

The Rev. Israel Acrelius, for many years pastor of the Swedish church of Philadelphia, wrote a book early in the last century, under the title, “History of New Sweden,” which has been translated into English. In describing the country and people, in their habits and amusements, he thus speaks of the horse:

“The horses are real ponies, and are seldom found over thirteen hands high. He who has a good riding horse never employs him for draught, which is also the less necessary, as journeys, for the most part, are made on horseback. It must be the result of this, more than to any particular breed in the horses, that the country excels in fast horses, so that horse races are often made for very high stakes.”

It will be noted that Mr. Acrelius does not say that these races were pacing-races; but when his remark is taken in connection with what Mr. Matlack said about the pacers, and when it is considered that he is speaking of the speed of the saddle horses as such, we can easily understand his true meaning. In our turf history I supposed I was getting well back when I reached the great race between Galloway’s Selim and Old England, in 1767, but here we find that race was comparatively modern, and that the pacers antedated the gallopers by many, many years.

In 1832 Mr. Watson did the same service for New York that he had done for Philadelphia, and published his “Annals of New York,” in which we find the piece of horse history embodied in the extract printed on pages 126 and 127, to which the reader will please turn.

It is hardly possible to be mistaken in assuming that Rip Van Dam’s letter was written to some person in Philadelphia, and that Mr. Watson saw it there. I would give a great deal for the sight of it; and if it has been preserved in any of the public libraries of that city, either in type or in manuscript form, I have good hopes of yet inspecting it. In one point of view, it is of exceeding value, and that is its date. It is fully established by this letter that, as early as 1711, the Narragansetts were not only established as a breed or family, but that their fame was already widespread. This, of necessity, carries us back into the latter part of the seventeenth century, when their exceptional characteristics were first developed, or began to manifest themselves. In reaching that period we are so near the first importations of horses to the colonies that it is no violence to either history or good sense to conclude that the original Narragansett was one among the very earliest importations. This plays havoc with some Rhode Island traditions, as will be seen below; but with 1711 fixed as a point when the breed was famous, traditions must stand aside.

While on this matter of dates, it may not be unprofitable to compare the advent of the Narragansett with the well-known epochs in horse history. Every schoolboy knows that the Darley Arabian and the Godolphin Arabian, say twenty years after, were the great founders of the English race horse. The Narragansetts had reached the very highest pinnacle of fame before the Darley Arabian was foaled. Darley Arabian reached England about the same year that Rip Van Dam’s Narragansett jumped over the side of the sloop and swam ashore, and this was eighty years before there was an attempt at publishing an English stud book. When Janus and Othello, and Traveller, and Fearnaught, the great founders of the American race horse, first reached Virginia, they found the Narragansett pacer had been there more than a generation before. On the point of antiquity, therefore, the Narragansett is older than what we designate as the thoroughbred race horse, and if he has a lineal descendant living to-day the pacer has a longer line of speed inheritance, at his gait, than the galloper.

The only attempt at a description of this breed that I have met with is that given by Cooper, the novelist, in a footnote to “The Last of the Mohicans.” This note may be accepted as history, so far as it goes, and pretends to be history; but I am not prepared to admit that all the breed were sorrels. This color, no doubt, prevailed in those specimens that Mr. Cooper had seen or heard of, but I think all colors prevailed, as in other breeds. He says:

“In the State of Rhode Island there is a bay called Narragansett, so named for a strong tribe of Indians that formerly dwelt on its banks. Accident, or one of those unaccountable freaks which nature sometimes plays in the animal world, gave rise to a breed of horses which were once well known in America by the name of Narragansetts. They were small, commonly of the color called sorrel in America, and distinguished by their habit of pacing. Horses of this race were, and still are, in much request as saddle-horses, on account of their hardiness, and the ease of their movements. As they were also sure of foot, the Narragansetts were much sought for by females who were obliged to travel over the roots and holes in the new countries.”

Without having a minute description of so much as a single individual of the race, I can only infer, from general descriptions, as to what their family peculiarities of form and shape may have been. It is fully established that they were very compact and hardy horses, and that they were not large; perhaps averaging about fourteen and a quarter hands in height. I have met with no intimation that they were stylish or handsome, and we think it is safe to conclude that they were plain in their form, and low in their carriage. From my conceptions of the horse I think one of the better-shaped Canadian pacers, of fifteen hands or thereabouts, might be accepted as a fair representative of the Narragansett of a hundred and fifty years ago. He was fleet, hardy, docile, and sure-footed, but not beautiful, and it is reasonable to suppose that the lack of style and beauty was one of the leading causes of his becoming extinct in the land of his nativity.

In considering the causes which resulted in what we may call the dispersal of the Narragansett pacers, and their extinction in the seat of their early fame, we must be governed by what is reasonable and philosophical in the industrial interests of the people, rather than look for some great overwhelming disaster, like an earthquake, that ingulfed them in a night. In speaking of this dispersal, and the causes which led to it, Mr. Hazard says:

“One of the causes of the loss of that famous breed here was the great demand for them in Cuba, when that island began to cultivate sugar extensively. The planters became suddenly rich, and wanted the pacing-horse for themselves and their wives and daughters to ride, faster than we could supply them, and sent an agent to this country to purchase them on such terms as he could, but to purchase them at all events. I have heard my father say he knew the agent very well, and he made his home at the Rowland Brown House, at Tower Hill, where he commenced purchasing and shipping until all the good ones were sent off. He never let a good one escape him. This, and the fact that they were not so well adapted to draught as other horses, was the cause of their being neglected, and I believe the breed is now extinct in this section. My father described the motion of this horse as differing from others in that his backbone moved through the air in a straight line, without inclining the rider from side to side, as the common racker or pacer of the present day. Hence it was very easy; and being of great power of endurance, they would perform a journey of a hundred miles in a day, without injury to themselves or rider.”

We can understand very well how an enormous and unexpected demand from Cuba without restriction as to price, should reduce the numbers of the breed very materially. But it is a poor compliment to the intelligence and thrift of the good people of Narragansett to say that, because there was a lively demand, they killed the goose that laid the golden egg every day. It is a slander upon that Yankee smartness which is proverbial to conclude that they deprived themselves of the means of supplying a market that was making them all rich. We must, therefore, look for other causes that were more potent in producing, so marked a result.

After more than a hundred years of faithful service, of great popularity, and of profitable returns to their breeders, the little Narragansetts began to disappear, just as their ancestors had disappeared a century earlier. Rhode Island was no longer a frontier settlement, but had grown into a rich and prosperous State. Mere bridle paths through the woods had developed into broad, smooth highways, and wheeled vehicles had taken the place of the saddle. Under these changed conditions, the little pacer was no longer desirable or even tolerable as a harness horse, and he was supplanted by a larger and more stylish type of horse, better suited to the particular kind of work required of him. This was simply the “survival of the fittest,” considering the nature of the services required of the animal. The average height of the Narragansett was not over fourteen hands and one inch. His neck was not long, even for his size; he dropped rapidly on the croup, and his carriage was low, with nothing of elegance or style in his appearance. His mane and tail were heavy, his hind legs were crooked, his limbs and feet were of the very best, but aside from his great speed and the smoothness of his movements under the saddle, there was nothing very desirable or attractive about him. In a contest with a type of the harness horse, at least one hand higher, of high carriage and elegant appearance, there could only be one result, and that soon decided.

As in England, so in this country, the blood of the running horse soon worked the extermination of the pacer; not because it was stronger in reproducing itself, perhaps, but because it had the skill and fancy of the breeder enlisted in selecting and mating so as to make the expunging process complete. Only a few years ago a pacing horse could hardly be found in any of the older settled portions of the country, especially where running blood had become fashionable. He was literally banished to the frontiers of Canada, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and especially in the latter two States, where his blood is still appreciated and preserved for the luxurious saddle gaits which it alone transmits. In many individual cases he has shown wonderful power in meeting and overcoming antagonistic elements, but with the tide of running blood all against him, it was only a question of time as to how soon he would be totally submerged.

It is only a quarter of a century ago that the first volume of “Wallace’s American Trotting Register” was published, and then began the great task of bringing order out of chaos. In a historical introduction to that work, I inserted the following:

“So many pacing horses have got fast trotters, so many pacing mares have produced fast trotters, and so many pacers have themselves become fast trotters, and little or nothing known of their breeding, that I confess to a degree of embarrassment, from which no philosophy relieves me. If the facts were limited to a few individual cases we could ignore the phenomena altogether, but, while they are by no means universal, they are too common and apparent to be thus easily disposed of. I am not aware that any writer has ever brought this question to the attention of the public; much less, attempted its discussion and explanation. Indeed, it is possible that the observations of others may not sustain me in the prominence given these phenomena, but all will concede there are some cases coming under this head that are unexplained, and perhaps unexplainable. It is probable trotters from this pacing origin, and that appear to trot, only because their progenitors paced, will not prove reliable producers of trotters. Such an animal being in a great degree phenomenal, should not be too highly prized in the stud, till he has proved himself a trotting sire as well as a trotter.”

This very comprehensive little paragraph, put modestly and tentatively rather than positively, contained a germ of thought that is to-day exerting a very wide influence. So far as my knowledge goes, this was the first time in which the public attention had ever been called to the intimate relations between speed at the pace and speed at the trot. Some laughed at it as not practical, others sneered at it as a theoretical abstraction, a few gave it some thought, while the writers who never think left it severely alone. It required the cumulative experiences of nearly ten years before horsemen generally began to think about it, and then ten more before the germ had matured itself in the minds of all intelligent men who were able to divest themselves of their earlier prejudices. The great primary truth now stands out in high relief that the pace and the trot are simply two forms of one and the same gait, that lies midway between the walk and the gallop. At last the truth, dimly foreshadowed in the paragraph above, is received and accepted, in some form or other, almost if not quite universally. This fact and its acceptance are now shown in all the recorded experiences of racing, and especially in the origin and habits of action of many of the heads of trotting and pacing families, to which the reader is referred.

At the beginning of Chapter XIII. I have labored to make plain the proposition that the pace and the trot are simply two forms of one and the same gait. This is evident from the fact that this gait, in one form or the other, is the intermediate link between the walk and the gallop, and this is true among nearly all quadrupeds. I have also there shown, and I think beyond cavil, that the mechanism of the pace and the trot is the same, and especially in the fact that in both forms two legs are used as one leg. That is, if the two legs on the same side move together, we call it the pace, and if the diagonal legs move together we call it the trot. The rhythm is the same and the sound is the same, and by the ear no man can tell whether the movement is at the lateral or diagonal motion. In all the varieties of steps that a horse may be taught, and in all the methods of progression that he may naturally adopt, there is no step or movement in which he uses two legs as one except in the pace or the trot. From the place, therefore, which these two forms of the gait hold, indifferently, in animal movement, between the walk and the gallop; from the unity of action and result in the use of the same mechanism, and from the wide disparity between the mechanism of this gait and that of all other gaits in the action of the horse, we must conclude that the pace and the trot are one and the same gait.

Another evidence of the unity of the two forms of the trot is to be found in the great numbers of pacers that have been changed over to trotters and the astonishing readiness with which they took to the new form of action. To go back no further than the records sustain us, we find that the converted pacer Pelham was the first horse that ever trotted in 2:28. This was in 1849, and four years later the converted pacer Highland Maid trotted in 2:27. Twenty years later, Occident, another, trotted in 2:16¾. These were champions of their day, and when we come a little nearer we find that Maud S. was a pacer and Sunol was a pacer, although neither of them ever paced in public, and the fact that they ever paced at all was held as a kind of “home secret.” Since the days of Pelham, literally thousands of horses have been changed from pacers to trotters, and some hundreds have been changed from trotters to pacers successfully. Then there are quite a number, like Jay-Eye-See, 2:10 trotting and 2:06¼ pacing, that have made fast records at both gaits.

At one time the pacing horse Blue Bull stood at the head of all sires of trotters in this country, and it is not known or believed that he possessed a single drop of trotting blood. He was a very fast pacer and could do nothing else, and a large percentage of the mares bred to him were pacers, and practically all the others had more or less pacing blood, but his great roll of trotters in the 2:30 list was the wonder of all horsemen of that period. Certainly the average of the elements in his inheritance would place him very low in theory, but in practice he struck back to some ancestor that was strongly prepotent. The trouble in his case is practically the same as in all other pacing stallions—the inheritance traces back to a period more remote than any of the fast trotting stallions, but at intervals it has been neglected and not developed until it has become weak and uncertain from lack of use. The same may be said of the Copperbottoms, Corbeaus, Flaxtails, Hiatogas, Davy Crockets, Pilots, Rainbows, Redbucks, St. Clairs, Tippoos, and Tom Hals, as well as other heads of minor families that will be considered in their proper places.

The changes that have been wrought in the status of the pacer have been truly wonderful. Instead of being hidden away as an outcast and a disgrace to the family, condemned to a life of inferiority and drudgery, he has been brought out and exhibited to the public as a son and heir and the equal of the best. In looking back over the trotting records of twenty years ago, any one will be surprised to observe that at all the leading meetings of the whole country there were no pacing contests. Occasionally at the minor and local meetings of the middle Western States, a pacing contest would be given for a small purse, in which local and obscure horses only would be engaged. Very naturally the owners of pacing horses protested against this practical exclusion of their favorites from the trotting meetings, and employed all their energies in begging for admission. When they began to be really clamorous the managers of trotting tracks argued that there could be no profit to them in opening pacing contests, for nobody cared about seeing a pacing match, that the entries would not fill, and especially that there would be no betting, that, consequently, the pool-sellers would have nothing to divide with the management. As the receipts for pool-selling and all other gambling privileges were making the track managers rich, they were very slow about admitting an untried element that might diminish their profits. But gradually and patiently the pacers worked their way into the exclusive circle, and when they appeared everybody, especially in the Eastern States, was surprised to see what excellent horses they were and the terrific speed they showed. Instead of the typical pacer, as formed in the popular mind, with the low head, bull neck, low croup, hairy legs, exuberant mane and tail, and generally “Canuck” all over, that would stop at the end of the first half-mile, here was an array of horses that in make-up and gameness would average just as well as the same number of trotters. This was a revelation to great multitudes of people, and from that time forward the pacer had a fair show, on his merits. For hundreds of years the pacer, with very few exceptions, has been able to show a little higher rate of speed than the trotter. When Flora Temple smashed all records in 1859 by trotting in 2:19¾, Pocahontas had drawn a wagon, five years earlier, in 2:17½; and when Maud S. trotted in 1885 in 2:08¾, this beat all laterals as well as diagonals, except Johnson, who the year before had paced in 2:06¼. In 1894 Alix trotted a mile in 2:03¾, which stands the best at this writing, but the same year Robert J. paced in 2:01½, and John R. Gentry in 2:00½ in 1896.

It is not my purpose here to undertake to discuss the reasons for the almost continuous supremacy of the pacer over the trotter, for there is no data from which I might frame a conclusion that would really “hold water.” At best, therefore, I can only suggest two or three thoughts. Speed at the pace is older, and has been longer in the process of development, than speed at the trot. In 1747 pacing races had then been fashionable in Maryland, and had been carried on in that colony time out of mind, but we have no trace of trotting races. One year later (1748) “running, pacing and trotting” races had become so numerous and so common in the colony of New Jersey that they were declared a nuisance and suppressed by the legislative authority. My impression from the language of the act is that it was aimed chiefly at the running and the pacing races, and that the trotters were not very numerous. It seems to be a reasonable conclusion that this racing mania in New Jersey took its rise about 1665, when Governor Nicolls established the Newmarket race course on Long Island, and if so, it had been growing in strength for over eighty years, and if we add the time from then till now we find that the speed of the pacer has been going on almost continuously for over two hundred years in our own country. There is another fact entering into the rural life of colonial times that must not be left out of consideration. The pacer was the universal saddle horse, and the trotter never was tolerated for that service. Every farmer’s son had his saddle horse, and when two of them met what so natural and common as to determine then and there which was the faster, if a little stretch of road offered? In these neighborhood rivalries, if not in actual racing, the instinct of speed at the pace was kept alive and developed, from generation to generation. If I am right in this little study of colonial life, we can understand that the inheritance of speed at the pace has come down to our own time through a great many generations of pacers, and hence the pace is the faster gait. There is one fact in our own experience that seems to sustain this with great force, and that is the small amount of “pounding” that the pacer requires in order to reach the full development of his powers. There is no need of driving a pacer to death in order to teach him how to pace, for he already knows how to pace, and all that is needed in the way of training is to get him into high condition. It may be possible that the lateral action is faster than the diagonal because it is less complicated, but I can see no anatomical reason for this, as the two legs in both gaits act as one leg. The only difference I can see in practice is that the trotter has more up-and-down motion than the pacer; that is, he bounds in every revolution, describing a series of depressed curves with his back as he moves, while the pacer rises less from the ground with his hind feet and seems to glide instead of bound; in other words, there is less action thrown away by the pacer than the trotter, and this may arise from the more complex action in the diagonal than in the lateral motion.

The pacer has reached a higher acclivity than the trotter, but he is not so well assured in his footing. His present popularity and his upward flight are phenomenal, but the causes that have sent him there are abnormal and not lasting. In his best individualities he is simply a gambling machine when in the hands of unscrupulous men, to be manipulated in whatever direction he will make the most money. Racing, at whatever gait, is not necessarily demoralizing nor disreputable, but when it falls into the control of the “professionals” it becomes both. So long as it remains under the control of the breeders it is not only honorable and legitimate for them to develop and race their stock, but it is a necessary adjunct to their business, for they must thus bring their products before the public, if they expect to make their business pay. Breeders should not own race tracks, or if they do, they should have no part nor lot in the percentage uniformly paid for the gambling privilege.

The history of racing in this country teaches over and over again that whenever the breeding and racing interest falls into the control of gamblers, down goes the whole interest and honest men suffer with the rogues. The grasping track managers are to-day complaining loudly that they cannot afford to give trotting meetings unless they are allowed to bring in the pool-sellers and make them divide the “swag” with the track. Every attempt by legislatures to make gambling on races a felony outside the race track and a virtue inside is a most arrant humbug and most destructive in its results. It makes the race track a cesspool of every vice, and a stench in the nostrils of every honest man and decent woman. The moral sense of the people all over this country is being aroused, and if public gambling cannot be suppressed on horse races, then history will repeat itself and horse racing will be wiped out. The gamblers and their friends will sneer at this as “puritanism,” but no difference about the name—it will come.

But, destructive and ruinous as gambling on races may be to the life and moral character of young men, as well as to the material interests of honest and reputable breeders, it hardly comes within my province to discuss it further in this place, and therefore I will return to the consideration of the pacer. As the historical periodicity is now looming in sight when the moral sense of the people will command the suppression of racing of every kind, the question becomes exceedingly pertinent as to what is to become of the pacer? He will no longer be of any value as a gambling machine, the days of the saddle horse are past as a means of travel, except by a few about the parks of the cities, and however uppish and handsome he may be, he is not and never will be a desirable driving horse in harness. We have already used sufficient of his blood to create the American Saddle Horse, and if the saddle horse shall produce “after his kind” we need no more infusions from the pure pacer. In the trotter his blood has leavened everything, and in some lines more than we desire or need. He has been a great source of trotting speed, and if, as I am inclined to believe, Messenger’s power to transmit trotting speed came from the old English pacer, then the pacer is the only source of that speed. Under the condition of things as here foreshadowed he will probably sink back into the obscurity from which he emerged twenty years ago.