But these other easily acquired Kentucky gaits are not to be despised. The running-walk is not hard upon the horse, and it is the easiest of all on the rider. When men on business, or soldiers on a march both have to go great distances in the saddle, the running-walk is about as great an excellence as a horse can be endowed with. It came into being in this country when most journeys were made on horseback. In those days, when about to take the long road from Lexington to Washington and Philadelphia, a man would have been considered lacking in intelligence who expressed contempt for either the amble or the fox-trot. And when Morgan’s men, during the Civil War, were making those wonderful raids—now here, now there, and the next day out of sight—they were generally mounted on these Kentucky-bred horses—not Thoroughbreds, but Denmarks and others of the saddle-class type, the one type that particularly belongs to Kentucky, and one of the very few types that we can call American. Long before Denmark came to Kentucky—fifty years and more—there had been good saddle-horses there. There was an urgent need for them, and men of enterprise usually get what they need. They had been brought from Virginia by the early settlers, they had come from Canada and from Vermont. They were excellent horses for the purposes of the time, but they lacked the fine finish that came to them from Denmark and other Thoroughbred crosses that were made about his time. It was not appreciated to the full what an excellent cross Denmark made on those old time mares until after his death, and the appearance of his sons as sires—particularly Gaines’s Denmark. From this latter horse the best saddle-horses that Kentucky has produced have descended and, in many instances, they breed back to him two, three and four times. To my mind, here is the strongest proof that the Denmark is a fixed reproducing type. Inbreeding is fatal among mongrels of any sort; but where the type is fixed it may be done with most excellent results and strictly, too, according to the rule of “like begetting like.”