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 
