14 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



them, and thus the best and fastest of all New England were 

 collected there. In 1768 the average height of the Narragansetts 

 was fourteen hands and one inch, which shows them to have been 

 about three and a quarter inches higher than the Virginia horses 

 of the same period. They were not all pacers, for out of thirty- 

 five there were eight that did not pace, and some others that 

 both trotted and paced. A full account of these famous pacers 

 will be found in the chapter on the Colonial Horse History of 

 New England, and that on The American Pacer and his Kelations 

 to the American Trotter. 



William Penn did not visit his princely gift from Charles II. 

 until 1683, and it was then under the government of the Duke of 

 York. In giving a description of things as he found them he 

 remarks: "The horses are not very handsome, but good," and 

 this is all he says of them. Knowing that Pennsylvania, in the 

 early part of this century, produced larger and heavier horses 

 than any other portion of the country, it was a great surprise to 

 me to find the undoubted proof that a hundred years earlier she 

 had produced the smallest and the lightest horses of any of the 

 colonies. In the first half of the last century the average size of 

 the horses of Eastern Pennsylvania was thirteen hands one and 

 a quarter inches, and they were remarkably uniform in size. This 

 was one-quarter inch below the average of the Virginians. Of 

 the twenty-eight animals examined as to gait, twenty-four of 

 them were natural pacers, three both paced and trotted, and a 

 single one trotted only. Finding these two facts of uniformity 

 of size and uniformity of gait together, we are prepared for 

 another fact that follows, viz., in Philadelphia the pacers were 

 more popular and fashionable than in any other city, so far as we 

 can learn, and they were selected with great care and bred for 

 their speed, and that speed was highly tested on the race-course. 

 They were breeding for speed without much regard to size, and 

 hence the uniformity. 



It has not been discovered that the colonists of New Jersey 

 made any direct importations of horses from England. Their 

 original supplies were obtained from New York on the one side 

 and Pennsylvania on the other. Erom these sources, therefore, 

 we can form a correct estimate of the size and gaits of the Jersey 

 horses, without going into particular investigation. The only 

 object," then, in referring to this colony is to prove that before 

 1748 all kinds of racing had become so common in the colony as 



