176 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



1759. He was an Irishman,, and appears to have been somewhat 

 haughty and irascible in his temperament, and was disposed to 

 find fault with the climate, the currency, the people, and pretty 

 much everything he came in contact with. He was a man of ob- 

 servation, and during the thirty-eight years he spent in minister- 

 ing to the spiritual wants of his flock, he was not unmindful of 

 what was passing around him, and made many notes and reflec- 

 tions on the various phases of life as they presented themselves 

 to his mind, and especially on the products and industries of the 

 colony. These notes and observations he wrote out, and they were 

 published in Dublin in 1753, under the title of "America Dis- 

 sected." 



His writings do not discover that he was a man of very ardent 

 piety, but he was honored as a good man while he lived, and was 

 buried under the altar he had served so long. His duties some- 

 times called him away into Virginia, and, in speaking of the 

 great distance of one parish from another, he uses the following 

 language : 



" To remedy this (the distance), as the whole province, between the moun- 

 tains, two hundred miles up, and the sea, is all a champaign, and without 

 stones, they have plenty of a small sort of horses, the best in the world, like 

 the little Scotch Galloways; and 'tis no extraordinary journey to ride from 

 sixty to seventy miles or more in a day. I have often, but upon larger pacing 

 horses, rode fifty, nay, sixty miles a day, even here in New England, where 

 the roads are rough, stony and uneven." 



The reverend gentleman seems to assume that his readers knew 

 the Scotch Galloways were pacers, and with this explanation his 

 observations are very plain. He makes no distinction between 

 the Virginia horse and his congener of Rhode Island except that 

 of size, in which the latter had the advantage. In speaking of 

 the products of Rhode Island he says: 



" The produce of this colony is principally butter and cheese, fat cattle, wool, 

 and fine horses, which are exported to all parts of English America. They are 

 remarkable for fleetness and swift pacing; and I have seen some of them pace 

 a mile in a Little more than two minutes, and a good deal less than three." 



When I first read this sentence in the reverend doctor's book 

 I confess I was not prepared to accept it in any other light 

 than that of a wild enthusiast, who knew but little of the force 

 of the language he used. To talk about horses pacing, a hun- 

 dred and fifty years ago, in a little more than two minutes and a 



