98 THE BREEDS OF LIVE-STOCK 
nearly every work devoted to the horse; and it is equally 
unnecessary to attempt to locate the origin of the gait, 
for there is no feature connected with the history of the 
horse that depends more on legendary lore than this. 
Suffice it to say that in Spain, where the saddle horse as a 
pack animal and for traveling was much in vogue, the 
pacing or ambling gait was considered a very necessary 
attribute; and the same is true in perhaps a lesser degree 
when the early history of the pacer in Great Britain is 
considered. 
110. History in America. — It is in America in colonial 
days that the pacer in the New England states seemed to 
reach the highest point of utility; from there and from 
Canada the pacer seems to have spread. The Narragan- 
sett pacer of Rhode Island attained a wide notoriety over 
the New England states in colonial times, but with the 
improvement of roads and the abandonment of horse- 
back riding for long-distance traveling, this strain became 
extinct. Whether or not it drifted over into Canada and 
formed the foundation for the remarkable number of 
pacers common to the Province of Quebec, is not definitely 
known, nor is there any other satisfactory supposition as to 
the origin of the Canadian pacing families. It would 
seem more plausible to account for the Canadian pacers 
in this way than to accredit them to French origin, for 
they were very dissimilar to the French horses of that 
time in their characteristics. 
The theory that the French-Canadian pacer is an off- 
shoot of the Thoroughbred has also been advanced and in 
some instances it may be proved, but in most instances 
the originator of the strain was by a Thoroughbred out 
of a pacing mare. Again, it has been asserted that the 
French-Canadian horse is a descendant of the French 
