132 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



and four were trotters only. As an evidence of the quality of the 

 Connecticut pacers, take the following passage from a little 

 volume published 1769, in England, entitled "A Voyage to North 

 America/ 7 by G. Taylor, Sheffield, England, 1768-69: 



" After dinner at New London, Conn., Mr. Williams and I took post horses, 

 with a guide to New Haven. Their horses are, in general of less size than 

 ours, but extremely stout and hardy. A man will ride the same horse a hun- 

 dred miles a day, for several days together, in a journey of five or eight hun- 

 dred miles, perhaps, and the horse is never cleaned. Tuey naturally pace, 

 though in no graceful or easy manner, but with such swiftness and for so long- 

 a continuance as luust seem incredible to those who have not proved it by 

 experience." 



This is a very different view of the pacer from that expressed 

 by another Englishman who visited Virginia in 1796. He had 

 never seen a pacer before and he was wholly unwilling to believe 

 his host when he assured him it was a natural gait and that many 

 colts paced from the day they were foaled. This, to the mind of 

 the Englishman could not be true, he says, "for none of our 

 horses ever move in that manner." (See Virginia, pp. 117-118). 



The most noted horse ever owned in Connecticut, at least in 

 colonial days, was the horse named and known in later times as- 

 Lindsay's Arabian. When I was younger I accepted the marvel- 

 ous story of the origin and early history of this horse, of which a, 

 brief account is given in the chapter on the "American Kace 

 Horse," to which reference is here made. This acceptance on 

 my part of the romantic story was largely superinduced by a 

 statement made by a justice of the Supreme Court of the United 

 States, that he had examined the animal when he was old and 

 found on three of his legs undoubted physical evidence that they 

 had at one time been broken. This appeared in a reputable 

 publication, but when compared with some other facts in the 

 history of the horse that are known, there can hardly be a doubt 

 that the examination by the justice was a fiction. When I began 

 to realize that the marvelous story was a mere fiction my "wrath 

 waxed hot" against the people of "'the land of steady habits," to- 

 say nothing of "wooden nutmegs," until Mr. 0. W. Cook made 

 it very plain that the people of Connecticut never had heard of 

 the remarkable story. (See Wallace's Monthly, Vol. VI., p. 251). 

 Thus it became evident that the whole story had been fabricated 

 in Maryland and was a kind of "green goods" method for catch- 

 ing the unwary. These are my apologies to the general public 



