As the contests of speed considered, up to this point, have all been at the running gait, I must not close my review of this colony without giving some attention to the pacers and the trotters. At these gaits all sources of information are almost hopelessly barren of facts and incidents. We know that the running horses of the colonial period were the saddle horses of the country, and we know that the best and most fashionable saddle horses were pacers. When we connect these two facts and place them alongside of the pacing and trotting experiences of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, we have no difficulty in reaching the safe conclusion that the same conditions would produce the same results as in those two States. Pacing and trotting contests were just as frequent and as exciting in this colony as in any other, but they were sustained chiefly by road-house keepers and butchers, and were never advertised. Matches were made one hour and decided on the road in the next. In the “Annals of New York,” compiled and published in 1832, by John F. Watson, we find the following curious, but very valuable, scrap of horse history: “Some twenty or thirty years before the Revolution, the steeds most prized for the saddle were pacers, since so odious deemed. To this end the breed was propagated with much care. The Narragansett pacers of Rhode Island were in such repute that they were sent for, at much trouble and expense, by some few who were choice in their selections. It may amuse the present generation to peruse the history of one such horse, spoken of in the letter of Rip Van Dam of New York, in the year of 1711, which I have seen. He states the fact of the trouble he had taken to procure him such a horse. He was shipped from Rhode Island in a sloop, from which he jumped overboard when under sail, and swam ashore to his former home. Having been brought back he arrived in New York, in thirteen days’ passage, much reduced in flesh and spirit. He cost thirty-two pounds and his freight fifty shillings. This writer, Rip Van Dam, was a great personage, he having been president of the Council in 1731, and on the death of Governor Montgomery that year, he was governor, ex-officio, of New York. His mural monument is now to be seen in St. Paul’s Church.” As New England saddle horses were only worth forty dollars in 1650, and this horse cost more than four times as much, when horses were more plentiful, we must conclude that he was a fine specimen of the breed, and was, probably, bought for stock purposes. The date of this transaction is a significant fact that should not be forgotten, as 1711 is the same year in which the first of the two great founders of the English race horse, Darley Arabian, was brought to England. CHAPTER X. COLONIAL HORSE HISTORY—NEW ENGLAND.