178 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



whom they were descended, they were a horse-racing, fox-hunting, feasting 

 generation." 



This paragraph from Mr. Hazard's pen has been the subject of 

 very deliberate consideration. The first promptings of my judg- 

 ment were to doubt and reject it, especially on account of the 

 absence of date to the letter, and of the remote period in which 

 Mr. Enoch Lewis must have visited Virginia. Another ques- 

 tion, as to why we have not this information from any other 

 source except Mr. Hazard, presented itself with no inconsiderable 

 force. After viewing the matter in all its bearings I am 

 forced to concede that it is likely to be true. These visits must 

 have taken place before the Revolution, and from the construc- 

 tion we are able to place upon the dates, this was not impossible. 

 It is a fact that I do not hesitate to announce that before the 

 Revolution racing in all its forms was more universally indulged 

 in as an amusement than it ever has been since. This was be- 

 fore the days of newspapers, and all we can possibly know of the 

 sporting events of that period we must gather up from the de- 

 tached fragments that have come down to us by tradition. 

 There was a strong bond of sympathy and friendship between the 

 followers of Dr. McSparran in Khode Island, surrounded as they 

 were by Puritans, and their co-religionists in Virginia. They 

 were accustomed to maritime life, and had abundance of vessels 

 fitted up for the shipment of horses and other live stock to 

 foreign ports. To take a number of their fastest pacers on board 

 one of their sloops and sail for Virginia would not have been con- 

 sidered much of an adventure. These visits were not only occa- 

 sions of pleasure and festivity, with the incidental profits of win- 

 ning purses and bets, but they were a most successful means of 

 advertising the Narragansett pacer; and through these means 

 alone the market was opened, as Dr. McSparran expresses it, in 

 all parts of British America. When we consider the widespread 

 fame of these Rhode Island horses, and that there were no other 

 means by which they could have achieved it, except by their 

 actual performances, we are forced to the conclusion that they 

 were carried long distances, and in many directions, for purely 

 sporting purposes. That these visits would result in the transfer 

 of a good number of the best and fastest horses from Narragan- 

 sett to Virginia would be a natural sequence, and thus, in after 

 years, we might look for a strong infusion of Narragansett blood 

 in the Virginian pacing-horse. 



