180 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



In 1832 Mr. Watson did the same service for New York that 

 he had done for Philadelphia, and published his "Annals of New 

 York/' in which we find the piece of horse history embodied 

 in the extract printed on pages 126 and 127, to which the reader 

 will please turn. 



It is hardly possible to be mistaken in assuming that Eip Van 

 Dam's letter was written to some person in Philadelphia, and that 

 Mr. Watson saw it there. I would give a great deal for the sight of 

 it; and if it has been preserved in any of the public libraries of that 

 city, either in type or in manuscript form, I have good hopes of yet 

 inspecting it. In one point of view it is of exceeding value, and 

 that is its date. It is fully established by this letter that, as 

 early as 1711, the Narragansetts were not only established as a 

 breed or family, but that their fame was already widespread. 

 This, of necessity, carries us back into the latter part of the 

 .seventeenth century, when their exceptional characteristics were 

 first developed, or began to manifest themselves. In reaching 

 that period we are so near the first importations of horses to the 

 colonies that it is no violence to either history or good sense to 

 conclude that the original Narragansett was one among the very 

 earliest importations. This plays havoc with some Rhode Island 

 traditions, as will be seen below; but with 1711 fixed as a point 

 when the breed was famous, traditions must stand aside. 



While on this matter of dates, it may not be unprofitable to 

 compare the advent of the Narragansett with the well-known 

 epochs in horse history. Every schoolboy knows that the Darley 

 Arabian and the Godolphin Arabian, say twenty years after, were 

 the great founders of the English race horse. The Narragansetts 

 had reached the very highest pinnacle of fame before the Darley 

 Arabian was foaled. Darley Arabian reached England about the 

 same year that Eip Van Dam's Narragansett jumped over the 

 side of the sloop and swam ashore, and this was eighty years be- 

 fore there was an attempt at publishing an English stud book. 

 When Janus and Othello, and Traveller, and Fearnaught, the 

 great founders of the American race horse, first reached Virginia, 

 they found the Narragansett pacer had been there more than a 

 generation before. On the point of antiquity, therefore, the 

 Narragansett is older than what we designate as the thorough- 

 bred race horse, and if he has a lineal descendant living to-day 

 the pacer has a longer line of speed inheritance, at his gait, than 

 the galloper. 



