This review of the horses of the colonial period embraces all that I have been able to glean of the character, qualifications, size and habit of action of the earliest importations and their descendants. Their diminutive size will be a surprise to my readers as it has been to me, and the overwhelming ratio of pacers to trotters will be a still greater surprise. The importance of increasing the size by judicious selections of the largest seems to have been ever present to the minds of the colonists, but not much could be accomplished in that direction, under the system prevalent everywhere of roaming at large. The little pacers were great saddle horses, and down to the days of good roads and wheeled vehicles they were deemed indispensable. That there were race horses among them at the running, pacing and trotting gaits there is indisputable evidence, covering about a hundred years of the colonial period, but there is no record of the rate of speed. The pacer was the favorite and fashionable horse of that period, and after something has been said about the Canadian horse we will take up his history and treat it with that fullness its importance demands. CHAPTER XII. EARLY HORSE HISTORY—CANADA. Settlement and capture of Port Royal—Early plantations—First French horses brought over 1665—Possibly illicit trading—Sire of “Old Tippoo”—His history—“Scape Goat” and his descendants—Horses of the Maritime Provinces. Before taking up the two provinces of the Dominion—Quebec and Ontario—to which reference is made in this volume as “Canada,” there is an incident in the history of Nova Scotia, full of sadness, that I cannot pass over without mention. The French made a settlement here in 1602, and named the country New France. The settlement to which I refer was at Port Royal, afterward named Annapolis by the English. This seems to have been a thrifty and flourishing little plantation, far removed from all outside associations, except the savages of the forests, with whom they lived in peace. The first horses brought to North America were owned and bred by the people of Port Royal. In November, 1613, Captain Argall, of Virginia, organized a plundering expedition, and having learned of the defenseless condition of Port Royal from Captain John Smith, he sailed up there with two or three ships, captured the place and carried away horses, cattle, sheep, wheat, farming utensils, and indeed everything their ships would carry, and then sailed away to Virginia. This raid was without authority or orders, but it was winked at by the officials, and forthwith a second raid was made by Argall, and all that had been left in the first was carried away in the second, as well as some of the inhabitants.