104 THE HORSE IN AMERICA 



a horse could trot at a good rate of speed. I will 

 not tire my readers with a recital of the fictions of 

 the contests on the roads of Long Island and 

 Harlem, but begin with the race of Lady Kate 

 under the saddle against time. Her task was to go 

 fifteen miles in an hour. This she did and easily. 

 Nor does it seem much of a task when we con- 

 sider that a few years later Andrew Jackson was 

 doing mile after mile in much less than three 

 minutes. This horse, by the way, was so superior 

 to the trotters of the time that his owner could 

 make few matches with him. His speed and en- 

 durance frightened the others off, and there was 

 little, if any, rivalry. We find it recorded, how- 

 ever, that Paul Pry, in 1833, beat time in an effort 

 to go sixteen miles to the hour, and Hiram Wood- 

 ruff, then a boy, expressed the opinion that this 

 horse could then have gone twenty miles in the 

 hour. This same old driver tells of a horse which 

 he thought was one of the most superior he ever 

 knew, Top Gallant, by Messenger. This fellow, 

 in his twenty-second year, went four four-mile 

 heats in time very fast for that day. A little later 

 appeared Dutchman, who, in a race of three-mile 



