104 TJIE PACING ELEMENT. 



and unexceptional degree. From the " great company " of pacers that 

 Polydore and Purchas saw there, none are left. The pacing horse is no 

 longer known in England, and it would be hard to convince an English 

 horseman that it was a quality that was inheritable and transmissible. 



But the pacing horse is still to be found in many parts of this country, and 

 with New York as the centre, the segment of a circle commencing in Maine, 

 and sweeping through Canada, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee, we 

 will, all along that line, find pacers in greater or less numbers. The same 

 law which banished them from the older portions of tlie country, with their 

 fine roads, preserved them on the borders, where wheels were not available. 

 The place of the pacer is new, wooded countries. He never flourished on 

 the prairies, and never will; the luxury of wh 3els is too easily available. 

 Only six or eight years ago half the trotting-men in tlie East hardly compre- 

 hended what a pacing race was, and when they oftered purses for pacers in 

 Indiana, they were disposed to be indignant. Thus, from the apex of popu- 

 larity and fashion, the pacer has disappeared from England altogether, and 

 on this continent he has been banished to the border life, midway between 

 luxury and refinement on the one hand, and the red man and the hunter on 

 the other; and never, till this year of grace, has there been an attempt to do 

 him justice. 



While the mystery of their origin is not greatly relieved, that of 

 their disappearance has disappeared with them. When the circum- 

 stances and condition of the people of the several countries was so 

 far changed that they had no use for the easy saddle gaits, and when 

 the demand for the horse that could go in light carriages rather than 

 under the saddle arose, then very soon the pacer — Narragansett, or 

 whatever he was — disappeared, and was succeeded by the trotting 

 horse. That is the simple statement that gives the fact and the cause 

 of his disappearance. He disappeared when his owner no longer had 

 any use for him — he became a trotter when the wants of his owner 

 called for one. The wants of the owner shape the character of the 

 horse that he uses; and it is found that he can make a pacer in four 

 generations, and can in a single one unmake him and restore him to 

 the ways of a trotter; and it finally comes to this, that the pacer is 

 the horse of easy saddle gait, always found and aboundijig in the 

 newly settled countries where bad roads abound, and where it is easier 

 to ride in the saddle than. in wheeled vehicles. 



The subject, like some others, is one of difficulty to the learned 

 author, and he is entitled to the sympathy of all those who, like my- 

 self, have learned of horses from actual use and familiarity with them. 

 jHe who learns it only from the papers and books, and with the aid of the 

 many thinkers and writers, so often referred to, finds many difficult 

 problems in his way. From my childhood I have been accustomed to 



