SADDLE HORSES. 157 



that of the Narragansett pacers. These horses appear 

 to have resembled very closely the palfrey of the Mid- 

 dle Ages, and they were developed for the same pur- 

 pose, namely, as a means of easy locomotion at a time 

 when roads were bad and vehicles uncomfortable. 

 The Narragansett pacers were in their heyday about 

 the middle of the eighteenth century, and they origi- 

 nated, as the name implies, in Rhode Island, not far 

 from Newport. "They carried," said a writer in 

 the North. American Review many years ago, "fair 

 equestrians from one to another of the many hospi- 

 table dwellings scattered over the fields of ancient 

 Aquidneck in Bishop Berkeley's time." 



How these horses were bred cannot now be discov- 

 ered. There is a tradition, which Frank Forester 

 seems to accept, that they were of Spanish origin; 

 and there is reason to think that the place of their 

 breeding was that long neck of land on Narragansett 

 Bay known as Point Judith, — the scene of many a 

 shipwreck. In the latter part of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury there flourished one John Hull, a rich and pious 

 merchant of Boston, at one time Treasurer of the Col- 

 ony. In a letter written in 1677 to one who owned 

 the tract just mentioned jointly with himself, Mr. Hull 

 proposed to shut it off from the mainland by a stone 

 wall, "that no mongrel breed might get thereon," and 

 in the enclosure thus made to rear "a very choice 

 breed for coach horses, some for the saddle, some 



for draught." 



Mr. Hull, it thus appears, contemplated the rearing 

 of harness as well as saddle horses, and it is a fact, 

 gathered from the custom-house records, that carriage 

 horses as well as pacers were afterward numerously 



