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. Denmark, 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,’ 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 2.05}. 
