AMBLERS OF ANTIQUITY, 101 



many parts, that the pacers were imported from Andalusia, but this is 

 successfully refuted by the known fact that the Spanish horse was a 

 Barb or Arab, and they never pace. It is however finally established 

 that the Narragansett pacer was the animal originally gifted with the 

 lateral gait, and that if he did not come down the mountain with the 

 early Navigator^he at least was the " ambler " to which the vn-iter in 

 the ancient dialect referred, and this is shown further by the writings 

 of sundry eminent clergymen who lived on this continent in the days 

 when people rode in the saddle from Rhode Island to Virginia and 

 the Carolinas to attend to the everyday affairs of life. One of these 

 reverend gentlemen informs us that the products of this colony 

 (Rhode Island) were at that time principally butter and cheese, fat 

 cattle, wool, and fine horses, which were exported to all parts of 

 English America. He then tells us of the fleetness of these little 

 steeds, and says he " has seen some of them pace a mile in a little 

 more than two minutes and a good deal less than three minutes.^'' 



I know that it will aptly enough be supposed by some that this gen- 

 tleman, from his professional habits of life, was not well acquainted with 

 the actual rate of speed at which a pacer traveled, never having held a 

 watch over him on a mile track, and moreover, was in the habit of plac- 

 ing entire and unsuspecting confidence in the statements of owners and 

 drivers, and it may be that in his day these gentlemen belonged to 

 the class of well known and perfectly reliable men, but if we are to 

 be allowed to judge of them by many of their descendants in the 

 direct line, in our day, we are prepared to properly estimate this state- 

 ment as a little too high for one of the ancient amblers. But as it 

 comes out that the fact of the Narragansett pacer, and his incredible 

 speed, is not nearly so much of a myth or fable to the minds of some 

 learned people as the legend of the Norfolk trotter, and his seventeen 

 and a half miles in an hour, on this high authority we are compelled 

 to accept of the fact as given to us, that there was such a breed as 

 the Narragansetts, and that they were a fast and easy-going saddle 

 family. In the present day I think no one will be found to question 

 the suggestion. Another writer, a Swedish pastor, is quoted, who 

 makes the matter more clear, by the statement that the horses in 

 America are real ponies, a?id are seldom found over sixteen hands 

 high. Nevertheless I can not so readily jump at the conclusion that 

 these Narragansette are the lineal descendants of the ancient 

 "amblers," described in the Vulgate tongue of Polydore Virgil, 

 whom we may reasonably suppose to have been a near relative of 



