380 THE HOUSE OF AMERICA. 



The only "trip" in this letter is where Mr. Kelly speaks of the 

 mare as "a dark bay/' but as the identity of the mare is fully 

 maintained by other witnesses, this shade of color is not material 

 and is, doubtless a slip of the pen. We don't know she was a 

 Narragansett mare, but we do know that she was called a Narra- 

 gansett. It is wholly possible she may have been a bastard Nar- 

 ragansett, or she may have been called a Narragansett merely 

 because she was a pacer. At that date there were still many de- 

 scendants of the old Narragansetts to be found, of greater or less 

 degree of purity in their breeding. Among Mr. Thomson's 

 gleanings from persons who knew the mare there are some bear- 

 ing upon her color and gait that are in order at this point of our 

 inquisition. Mr. John Bellows, the. owner of Sherman Morgan, 

 says: "She was a good-sized black mare, a fast trotter, with a 

 swinging gait, and resembled in appearance the Messenger stock 

 of horses." The following description was gathered from several 

 persons who knew the mare well and among them Mr. Wingate 

 Twombly, son of her former owner. "She was a large, rangy 

 mare, a little coarse and brawny, did not carry much flesh, might 

 have weighed some over one thousand pounds and was a trifle 

 over fifteen and one-half hands high. Head and ears rather 

 large, neck long and straight, withers low and thin, medium 

 mane and tail, had more hair on the fetlocks than her son, was 

 called black a little way off, but close to one could see her grey 

 hairs mingled with her coat and close to she was called a steel 

 mixed. She had a white strip in her face and some say a little 

 white on one hind foot. She was smart to go, but her gait was 

 not a smooth, square trot. Some called it a sort of a pace, 

 others that she single-footed. She went with her head low when 

 trotting fast. One person said it was about a straight line from 

 her back to her head when she was going fast. She was called 

 the Narragansett Mare when Mr. Kelly owned her. From other 

 sources and from men who personally knew the mare and had 

 ridden beside her, we have undoubted evidence that she was very 

 fast, but all through there is some confusion about the character 

 of her gait. Mr. Bellows, who ought to know something about 

 the gait of a horse, says: "She was a fast trotter, with a swing- 

 ing gait." Now just what he means by the phrase "swinging 

 gait" is hard to determine. Putting all these bits of evidence 

 together, the reasonable conclusion seems to be that she was 



