ANTIQUITY AND HISTORY OF THE PACING HORSE. 165 



Phoenicians, when they ruled the trade of the world, supplied the 

 whole of the northern coast of Africa, from Egypt to Algiers, and 

 the southern coast of Spain, with horses, about a thousand years 

 before the Christian era. Now, the horses of those regions are 

 the descendants of the original stock carried there by the Phoeni- 

 cians, and we know their habit of action is not that of the pacer. 

 Hence the conclusion that the English pacer came from the 

 North and not from the South. In speaking of the difference in 

 the gaits of Northern and Southern horses, Mr. John Lawrence 

 specifies the horses of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, etc., and says: 

 "They are round made, but with clean heads and limbs; their 

 best pace is the trot (or pace), which indeed is the characteristic 

 pace of the Northern, as the gallop is of the Southern horse." 

 Other writers speak of the trot (or pace) as common to Northern 

 horses, but as not common to Southern horses. Now, as all 

 Southern horses do trot, and as these writers could not fail to 

 know that they trotted, at some rate of speed, we must construe 

 their terms so as to be consistent with plain, common sense. 

 There was something in the "trot" of the Northern horse alto- 

 gether different from the "trot" of the Southern horse that ren- 

 dered his habit of action more conspicuous, probably by his higher 

 rate of speed, but still more probably by the peculiar mechanism 

 of his lateral action. If we insert the word "pace" instead of 

 the word "trot," the meaning of these old writers becomes very 

 plain and in harmony with other known- facts. Neither does it 

 militate against the theory that the inhabitants of Britain may have 

 secured their original horse stock from the Phoenician merchants; 

 but if they did, it seems quite evident that at a later date they 

 supplemented their supply from the pacing element from the 

 North. 



At the close of the fifteenth century Polydore Virgil, an 

 Italian ecclesiastic, came to England and wrote a descriptive his- 

 tory of the British Islands in Latin, which was published about 

 1509. Part of this history was very clumsily translated about 

 the time the English language began to assume its present form 

 in literature and learning. In speaking of the horses of the 

 country, he seems to have been greatly surprised with the pacers, 

 and treats them as a curiosity. He says: "A great company of 

 their horses do not trot, but amble, and yet neither trotters nor 

 amblers are strongest, as strength is not always incident to that 

 which is most gentle or less courageous." It will be observed 



