1883.] THE AMERICAN TROTTING HORSE. 221 



Volney, an educated Frenchman, who made a trip in the far "West 

 in 1795 to 1798, has told us what they were even then. He com- 

 pared those western plains to Tartary, which he had also visited, 

 and says " the likeness would be completed could we see its natives 

 metamorphosed into horsemen," and adds that "this transforma- 

 tion has begun to take place within the last twenty-five or thirty 

 years " among the Sioux, who were beginning to be mounted on Span- 

 ish horses derived from Mexico, and he prophecies that "in half 

 a century more these new Tartars will probably become formidable 

 neighbors, and the settlers beyond the Mississippi will encounter 

 difficulties totally unknown to their ancestors." ( Volney's View, 

 p. 24.) We know all too well how this prediction has been ful- 

 filled. With only dogs and buffalo the tribes were feeble and little 

 to be feared; but with horses they became a new, people — the Arabs 

 of America, and the most formidable foe that European civiliza- 

 tion has met with in her western march. 



The Spanish horses were carried to England to improve her 

 breed of war-horses, and were an important element in the rise of 

 British power. And they went to Holland, and France ; and 

 wherever they went they helped increase national power and 

 national wealth. 



But remember all this is about a horse to ride; a horse that 

 would walk when in no hurry, or trot, amble, rack, or canter on 

 the march to relieve his own or his rider's tired muscles, or on 

 the run sweep down on the place of the enemy like a whirlwind, 

 and then retreat as swiftly should that be necessary. 



Only a running-horse is fit for such work. Try to imagine an 

 Indian raid or an Arab foray on trotting-horses ; the very idea 

 strikes one as ludicrous. 



Even in Europe the want was essentially the same. With the use 

 of heavy armor in the Middle Ages a heavier animal was needed; 

 yet he was a charger, a prancing, galloping steed. Imagine a 

 crusader of old, clad in steel, rattling to the charge on a trotter ; 

 the suggestion provokes merriment. 



Even in later times, when artillery and wagon-trains became a 

 part of armies, the want was essentially the same; the heavy horse 

 of the dragoon was fit for the gun-carriage or the baggage -wagon. 



It was the war horse that stood as the representative of his 

 species from the days when Job's horse snuffed the battle from 

 afar down through the days of Greek, Persian, and Roman history, 



