PILOT 2?5 



sold and others trained and raced with very marked success. Among these 

 was a black colt, foaled 1823 '24 or '25, that he sold when eighteen months old to 

 Andre" Chicouagne, who sold him later to Joseph Dansereau, a brother of Louis, 

 by whom he was taken in 1829 to Montreal and sold to an American for one 

 hundred and fifty dollars. This colt became a black stallion of fifteen hands 

 high and in description is exactly identical with Pilot. He was an exceedingly 

 fast pacer, and a great puller, so that it was difficult to drive him, and it is in 

 evidence that the man who kept him at Montreal was afraid to drive him. We 

 have already shown that in the fall of 1829 Elias Lee Rockwell of Strafford, 

 Connecticut, purchased, for one hundred and fifty dollars, in Montreal, the black 

 stallion Pilot, then about five years old, a very fast pacer and a great puller, 

 so that he was obliged to ride him with pulleys fastened to the saddle, and 

 that one of the men where Pilot was kept at Montreal was afraid to drive 

 him. These descriptive facts, color, size, gait, speed, quality and temper, 

 taken with the price and date of transfer, all in complete accord, when ap- 

 plied to a horse of such extraordinary characteristics that he could hardly be 

 duplicated, make the inference irresistible that they are applied to one and 

 the same animal. The only link of evidence missing is that the parties on 

 one side do not remember the name of the Frenchman who sold the horse, 

 and the parties on the other do not know the name of the American who 

 bought him. This might well have been true had the sale been a recent one, 

 as the parties concerned were entire strangers, of different nationalities, and 

 probably did not understand each other's language ; but when we consider 

 that sixty years had passed before the facts were looked up, that both parties 

 to the transaction and nearly all who knew about it had long been dead, we 

 may well be amazed and gratified at the extent and accuracy of the evidence 



obtained. 



At this point we will introduce some contemporaneous evidence regard- 

 ing the fast pacers of Canada, and especially this Dansereau family. It con- 

 sists of extracts from letters written by our old friend George Barnard of 

 Sherbrooke, and published in the New York " Spirit of the Times " nearly or 

 quite fifty years ago. The first is from a letter dated at Sherbrooke, Novem- 

 ber 23d, 1846 : 



" Sixty miles to the north of this we come into the French country, 

 where the land is occupied by : 



" ' The low Canadian, swart and mild of mien, 

 In toque, capote, ceinture and moccasin '. 



" Ten miles further is Grand Maska on the pleasant Yamaska River, navi- 

 gable thus far for sloops, and lined almost throughout its whole length, like 

 other rivers in the French settlements, by neat white cottages accompanied 

 by thatched barns, with here and there substantial stone houses, and at every 

 few miles some elegant buildings cluster about a larger and more costly one 

 with a belfry and spire. 



" Forty miles up this river at St. Damase was reared the great Moscow, 

 now upon your trotting turf, and who has precisely verified my foretold ex- 

 pectation in showing himself equal to the mile in 2 :2 8. In my description 



