COLONIAL HORSE HISTORY VIRGINIA. 119 



the history of the horses of his own country he would have known 

 that from the time of King John down to that of James I., the 

 pacer was the most popular and fashionable horse in England, 

 and that the nobility and gentry used no other kind for the sad- 

 dle. He was always of "a mean stature/' but he was compact, 

 hardy and strong, and could carry his burden a long journey in a 

 day with great ease and comfort to his rider. In the reign of 

 Elizabeth, he was kept separate from others, and bred as a breed 

 on account of his easy, gliding motion, which he transmitted to 

 his progeny. At the time of the plantation of the English colo- 

 nies in this country the pacers were very numerous, and as they 

 were just the type of horse suited to wilderness life, a very large 

 proportion of those selected were pacers. The pacers our traveler 

 saw in Virginia were the lineal descendants of the original Eng- 

 lish stock brought over by the adventurers, and the awkward rid- 

 ing charged upon the Virginians, with some evident exaggera- 

 tions, was wisely and sensibly adapted to the action of the horses 

 they were riding. The criticism of the long stirrups is wholly 

 unjust, as they are just the right length for the "military" seat, 

 and nobody in this country when mounted on a real saddle horse 

 would ever think of taking any other. The Englishman, when 

 mounted on his "bonesetter," is compelled to have his stirrups 

 .short so that he can rise and fall with every revolution the horse 

 makes on the trot to save himself from being shaken to death. 

 This up and down, up and down, tilt-hammer seat, if it can be 

 called "a seat" at all, is one of the most ungraceful things, 

 especially for a lady, that can be conceived of in all the displays 

 of good and bad equestrianism. The English have been com- 

 pelled to adopt it because they have no trained saddle horses, 

 -and a lot of brainless imitators about our American cities have 

 followed them because "it is English, you know." If the Eng- 

 lish had pacers and horses trained to the "saddle gaits," they 

 never would have anything else, and the tilt-hammer "seat" 

 would disappear from Kotten Kow and everywhere else. 



