72 THE HOKSE. 



draw the team, the same labor in no degree detracted from the 

 chaise or carriage liorse. 



Hence the pacer was superseded by the trotter; and the 

 riding horse from being an article of necessity, became one of 

 exclusive luxury ; to such a degree, that, until comparatively a 

 very recent period, when ladies again began to take up riding, 

 there have been very few distinctively broken riding horses, 

 and still fewer kept exclusiveli/ as such, in the Northern States 

 of America. 



Probably, there never was a country in the world, in whicli 

 there is so large a numerical projiortion of horses to the popula- 

 tion, and in which the habits of the people are so little eques- 

 trian, as the States to the north and east of Mason and Dixon's 

 line. 



In a day's journey through any of tlie rural districts, one 

 will meet, beyond a doubt, a hundred persons travelling in light 

 wagons, sulkies, or chaises, for five — I hardly think I should 

 err, if I were to say for one — on horseback. 



And this unquestionably is the cause of the decline, or ra- 

 ther the extinction, of the pacer. 



For, although there have been, since my own recollection, 

 pacing horses in this section of the country, jDrofessedly from 

 Rhode Island, and called by names implying a ]S"arragansett ori- 

 gin, and although it may well be that they were from tliat re- 

 gion, and possibly from that blood, in a remote degree, they did 

 not pace naturally, because they were Narragansctt Pacers, but 

 were called Narragansett Pacers because, coming somewhere 

 from that region of country, they paced by accident — as many 

 chance horses do — or, in some instances, had been taught to 

 pace. 



It is a matter of real regret that this family has entirely dis- 

 appeared, and I presume without any prospect or hope of its re- 

 suscitation. In England, notwithstanding what Mr. Hazard 

 states, in the note I have quoted above, concerning the impor- 

 tation of these pacers, under the name of Spanish jennets, I 

 never saw or heard tell, having been among horses and horse- 

 men since my earliest childhood, of any such race of ladies' rid- 

 ing horses ; nor have I ever read, to the best of my memory, 



