Trotting and pacing racing in America had been popular even before Messenger’s coming, and long before his get and their get appeared on the road. But the matches were neighborhood affairs and attracted only local attention. There was absolutely no effort at organization and the construction of trotting tracks until many years later. What racing there was was in the hands and under the control of gentlemen; how much interest they took in these trotting and pacing matches I do not know. But not much I fancy, for caste in America was stronger and more separating than it is now, when, if we put the “mighty rich” in a class by themselves there is very little at all. It was not until between 1820 and 1830 that horses were trotted on tracks, and then there was little, if any, of this mile heat business to see really how fast a horse could go for a short distance. What the people of that elder day seemed to be most interested in was how far a horse could trot at a good rate of speed. I will not tire my readers with a recital of the fictions of the contests on the roads of Long Island and Harlem, but begin with the race of Lady Kate under the saddle against time. Her task was to go fifteen miles in an hour. This she did and easily. Nor does it seem much of a task when we consider that a few years later Andrew Jackson was doing mile after mile in much less than three minutes. This horse, by the way, was so superior to the trotters of the time that his owner could make few matches with him. His speed and endurance frightened the others off, and there was little, if any, rivalry. We find it recorded, however, that Paul Pry, in 1833, beat time in an effort to go sixteen miles to the hour, and Hiram Woodruff, then a boy, expressed the opinion that this horse could then have gone twenty miles in the hour. This same old driver tells of a horse which he thought was one of the most superior he ever knew, Top Gallant, by Messenger. This fellow, in his twenty-second year, went four four-mile heats in time very fast for that day. A little later appeared Dutchman, who, in a race of three-mile heats against Rattler, went the distance in 7.45½, 7.50, 8.02 and 8.24, Dutchman won the first and fourth heat, Rattler won the second heat, while the third was a dead heat. Here we see the first heat was trotted at the rate of 2.35, which was surely very fast going, considering the distance, the vehicles used and the shoeing. But such journeys are now considered too far.