The wealthier Puritans were mounted on fine pacing horses, "once so highly prized, now so odious deemed;" for trotting horses were not in much demand or repute in America until after the Revolutionary War. There were, until that date, professional horse-trainers, whose duties were to teach horses to pace; though by far the best saddle-horses were the natural-gaited "Narragansett Pacers," the first distinctively American race of horses. These remarkably easy-paced animals were in such demand in the West Indies for the use of the wives and daughters of the wealthy sugar-planters, and in Philadelphia and New York for rich Dutch and Quaker colonists, that comparatively few of them were allowed to remain in New England, and they were, indeed too high-priced for poor New England colonists. The natural and singular pace of these Narragansett horses, which did not incline the rider from side to side, nor jolt him up and down, and their remarkable sureness of foot and their great endurance, rendered them of much value in those days of travel in the saddle. They were also phenomenally broad-backed,--shaped by nature for saddle and pillion. When trotting-horses became fashionable, the trainers placed logs of wood at regular intervals across the road, and by exercising the animals over this obstructed path forced them to raise their feet at the proper intervals, and thus learn to trot. Long distances did many of the pre-revolutionary farmers of New England have to ride to reach their churches, and long indeed must have been the time occupied in these Sunday trips, for a horse was too well-burdened with saddle and pillion and two riders to travel fast. The worshippers must often have started at daybreak. When we see now an ancient pillion--a relic of olden times--brought out in jest or curiosity, and strapped behind a saddle on a horse's back, and when we see the poor steed mounted by two riders, it seems impossible for the over-burdened animal to endure a long journey, and certainly impossible for him to make a rapid one.