SADDLE HORSES. 163 



relationship in some cases between Kentucky trotters 

 and saddlers. Thus the thoroughbred John Dillard 

 has sired the dams of many trotters ; and not a few 

 trace to Denmark. Deumark, also a thoroughbred, 

 was a black horse of great style and substance, and 

 his descendants, as a rule, take after him in a marked 

 degree. Denmark founded the chief saddle strain 

 in Kentucky. Tom Hal, the saddle stallion, is of 

 the same family as Tom Hal, Brown Hal, and Hal 

 Pointer, 1 pacers of celebrity on the track. 



The old-time Kentucky pacer afforded the chief 

 means of locomotion in that State, the highways being 

 scarcely fit for wheeled vehicles. Only a few years 

 ago, it was proposed to build a good turnpike from a 

 certain " back " county to the nearest railroad ; and 

 a provident farmer of the old school was called upon 

 to assist the project with a contribution. But he re- 

 fused. The intention was to build a " twelve-foot " 

 pike ; and the farmer rebelled at such extravagance. 

 A three-foot track was wide enough, he declared, for 

 his horse, and anything more was superfluous. " The 

 old saddler," writes a modern Kentuckian, " shuffled 

 along the path where it was level, and went a half 

 trot over the hills. He suited the country folk well 

 in that day, but would be out of place now." The 

 word " shuffling " aptly describes the pace, which is 

 an awkward, inelegant gait. It was the same in the 

 old Kentucky pacers that it is in the modern pacer of 

 the race course, but when the Kentucky half-bred sad- 

 dler came into being this ugly gait was supplemented 

 by one smoother and more graceful. 



1 Since this chapter was put in type, Hal Pointer has paced a 

 mile in 2.05J. 



