COLONIAL HORSE HISTORY VIRGINIA. 109 



horses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and as to the 

 nineteenth, the newspapers will furnish everything what is 

 needed. 



It is evident that the fleet of three vessels which took out to 

 Virginia the first adventurers took also some horses and mares 

 with them; for the governor and council, who went out the next 

 year, in reporting the condition of the colonists to the home 

 company, under date of July 7, 1610, use this language: 



" Our people, together with the Indians, had, the last winter, destroyed and 

 killed up all our hogs, inasmuch as of five or six hundred, as it is supposed, there 

 was not above one sow that we can hear of left alive, not a hen or a chick in 

 the fort, and our horses and mares they had eaten with the first." 



From a letter written by M. Gabriel Archer, who arrived in 

 Virginia August 31, 1609, we gather the following facts: 



" From Woolwich, the fifteenth day of May, 1609, seven sail weighed anchor 

 and came to Plymouth the twentieth day, where George Soiuers, with two 

 small vessels, consorted with us. There we took into The Blessing, being the 

 ship wherein I went, six mares and two horses, and the fleet layed in some 

 necessaries belonging to the action; in which business we spent time till the 2d 

 of June, and then set sail to sea, but crossed by South West winds, we put into 

 Falmouth, and there stayed until the 8th of June, then gate out." 



Now, as The Blessing was probably about the average size 

 of the rest of the fleet, I think it is reasonable to conclude that 

 each of the other vessels took some horses also. In a report of a 

 voyage to Virginia, dated November 13, 1611, we find the follow- 

 ing statement: "They have brought to this colony one hundred 

 cows, two hundred pigs, one hundred goats, and seventeen horses 

 and mares." In 1614 the Virginians made a raid on Port Eoyal, 

 in what was then called New France, and carried off to Virginia, 

 among other captures, a number of horses, mares and colts. A 

 second raid in the same quarter seems to have resulted in carry- 

 ing off wheat, horses, clothing, working tools, etc. 



Mr. Harmor, writing in 1614, in his "True Discourse on the 

 Present State of Virginia," says: "The colony is already fur- 

 nished with two hundred neat cattle, infinite hogs in herds all over 

 the woods, some mares, horses and colts, poultry, great store, 

 etc." 



In 1894, in the Public Records Office in London, I found that 

 the Virginia Company had sent out four mares, February, 1619, 

 on The Falcon. And further, I found a kind of summary of 



