98 THE BREEDS OF LIVE-STOCK 



nearly every work devoted to the horse ; and it is equally 

 unnecessary to attempt to locate the origin of the gait, 

 for there is no feature connected with the history of the 

 horse that depends more on legendary lore than this. 

 Suffice it to say that in Spain, where the saddle horse as a 

 pack animal and for traveling was much in vogue, the 

 pacing or ambling gait was considered a very necessary 

 attribute ; and the same is true in perhaps a lesser degree 

 when the early history of the pacer in Great Britain is 

 considered. 



110. History in America. It is in America in colonial 

 days that the pacer in the New England states seemed to 

 reach the highest point of utility; from there and from 

 Canada the pacer seems to have spread. The Narragan- 

 sett pacer of Rhode Island attained a wide notoriety over 

 the New England states in colonial times, but with the 

 improvement of roads and the abandonment of horse- 

 back riding for long-distance traveling, this strain became 

 extinct. Whether or not it drifted over into Canada and 

 formed the foundation for the remarkable number of 

 pacers common to the Province of Quebec, is not definitely 

 known, nor is there any other satisfactory supposition as to 

 the origin of the Canadian pacing families. It would 

 seem more plausible to account for the Canadian pacers 

 in this way than to accredit them to French origin, for 

 they were very dissimilar to the French horses of that 

 time in their characteristics. 



The theory that the French-Canadian pacer is an off- 

 shoot of the Thoroughbred has also been advanced and in 

 some instances it may be proved, but in most instances 

 the originator of the strain was by a Thoroughbred out 

 of a pacing mare. Again, it has been asserted that the 

 French-Canadian horse is a descendant of the French 



