THE SADDLE-HORSE 



descendants were much appreciated, and, owing 

 largely to the long journeys and the usually 

 wretched roads, necessity and native ingenuity 

 quickly set about methods to increase the ease 

 to the rider, and furnish to him, and his not 

 infrequent female companion en croupe^ an easy 

 gliding gait which should neither discommode 

 the lady, nor fracture the eggs and bottles which 

 were a not infrequent part of the cargo. 



The slow amble, or pace (most easily taught to 

 animals of the proper conformation) was in gen- 

 eral use, and even in those early times the hob- 

 bles were used for purposes of education, and 

 the legs tied together laterally until the "side- 

 wheeling" motion had been acquired. This pace 

 it was found was transmissible, and horses of a 

 certain shape either possessed the gait from birth 

 or readily acquired and easily performed it. From 

 this beginning followed, at brief intervals, the de- 

 velopment of the single-foot, or rack, the fox- 

 trot, and the running-walk, but just in what order 

 no man knoweth. 



While the gaited saddle-horse — the five gaited 

 beast — of the West and South is upheld by his 

 admirers as the only properly educated " saddler " 

 (an excellent, expressive, thoroughly American 



143 . 



