160 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



" The Irish Hobble is a pretty fine horse, having a good head and a body in- 

 differently well proportioned, saving that many of them be slender and pin-- 

 buttocked. They are tender-mouthed, nimble, pleasant and apt to be taught, 

 and for the most part they be amblers and thus very meet for the saddle and to 

 travel by the way. Yea, and the Irishmen, both with darts and light spear e , 

 do use to skirmish with them in the field, and many of them do prove to that 

 use very well, by means they be so light and swift. 



" Let those mares that shall be put to the stallion be of a high stature, 

 strongly made, large and fair, and have a trotting pace as the mares of Flan- 

 ders and some of our own mares be. For it is not meet, for divers reasons, 

 that horses of [service stallions] should amble. But if any man seeks to have- 

 a race of ambling horses, to travel by the way, then I would wish his stallion 

 to be a fair jennet of Spain, or at least a bastard jennet, or else a fair Irish 

 ambling Hobbie; and the mare to be also a bastard jennet, bred here within 

 this realm, having an ambling pace, or else some other of our ambling mares, 

 so that the mare be well proportioned. And if any man desires to have swift 

 runners let him choose a horse of Barbary or a Turk to be his stallion, and let 

 the mare, which shall be put unto him, be like of stature and making unto 

 him, so nigh as may be, for most commonly, such sire and dam such colt." 



It is evident Mr. Blundeville was not much of a, friend of the 

 pacer, but as an honest writer he considers things as he finds 

 them. Unfortunately he throws no light upon just what he 

 means by the term "Spanish Jennet," and a definition of that 

 term, as used in the sixteenth century, would throw much light 

 on passages from following writers in later periods. Everybody 

 knows he was a small Spanish saddle horse, but nobody knows 

 just what gait he took. To use Blundevilles own language, 

 "The pace of the jennet of Spain is neither trot nor amble, but a, 

 comely kind of going like the Turke." 



Mr. Gervaise Markham published several revised and enlarged 

 editions of his work on the horse, the last of which I have been 

 able to examine being printed in London, 1607, the same year 

 the colony was planted at Jamestown, Virginia. In this edition 

 he devotes nine short chapters or paragraphs to the pacer. In 

 quoting from him I will again use the modern methods of spell- 

 ing. He says: 



" First to speak of ambling in general. It is that smooth and easy pace 

 which the labor and industry of an ingenious brain hath found out to relieve 

 the aged, sick, impotent and diseased persons, to make women undertake 

 journeying and so by their community to grace society; to make great men try 

 the ease of travel, more willing to thrust themselves into the offices of the com- 

 monwealth, and to do the poor both relief and service. It makes them when- 

 necessity, or as the proverb is, "when the devil drives," not to be vexed witto 

 the two torments, a troubled mind and a tormented body. To conclude, am- 



