CHAPTER XXX 



THE PACING HORSE 



WHEN the country was new and the roads 

 were bad the easy-gaited saddle horse was in 

 demand. Long journeys were made on his back. 

 The use of light vehicles was out of the question. 

 In Rhode Island there was a family of pacers 

 called the Narragansett, and it is claimed that 

 it sprang from stock imported from Andalusia in 

 Spain. This blood was widely disseminated, and 

 it was the germ from which came the tendency 

 to ease of motion under saddle in other sections 

 of the land. The pacing ancestors of Kentucky 

 and Tennessee were from Canada, and Mr. Bat- 

 tell contends that their origin was not found in 

 the horses originally imported into Canada from 

 France. " There are but two sources," he writes, 

 "other than the original Canadian stock, from 

 which the Canadian pacer could have sprung 

 the horses imported from across the sea, or from 

 the States. The English thoroughbred blood 

 might add to the speed of the pacer, but it cer- 



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