SOUTH CAROLINA received her colonial charter in 1663, and the earliest newspaper that I have found was for the year 1744, from the advertisements in which I have extracted the following data as to size and gait. In the first four and the last four months of the _South Carolina Gazette_ for 1744 I find thirty horses advertised as strayed or stolen, in which the size is given, and they average within a small fraction of an inch of thirteen and one-half hands, and of this number three are given as fifteen hands, which was considered, in that day, a large horse. Out of this number the gait is given in only twelve cases, ten of which were pacers, one paced and trotted, and one trotted only. The foundation horse stock of South Carolina was obtained chiefly, if not wholly, from Virginia, and the practice of branding and turning out, to roam at large, prevailed everywhere. In the issues of the _Gazette_ for this year (1744) I find but one advertisement of a stallion for public service, and he is called the “famous racing horse named Roger,” and is advertised as a great, race horse, but there is no attempt to give a pedigree or to claim that he possessed any blood that was not the inheritance of all others. Another advertisement is a lengthy challenge from Joseph Butler to run his gelding Chestnut against any horse, mare or gelding for five hundred or one thousand pounds “inch and weight,” the lowest horse carrying thirteen stone. No mention or reference is made to his blood, and from these two facts we may reasonably infer that at that time there were no strains of blood, known to the Carolinians, specially bred to run. The distance to be run is not definitely mentioned, but it was on a road from one point to another, and I suppose it was about two and a half, or possibly three miles. This was three years before the first English race horse was imported into Virginia. It has been represented that an old gentleman, whose name is forgotten, imported into South Carolina a number of English race horses at a period long anterior to this, but that claim has never been in a shape that placed it above very grave suspicion and doubt; and the claim accompanying it, in the way of apology, that the old man would never allow any of his horses to race, did not improve its credibility. From the advertisements just referred to, it seems evident that there was no distinctively English running blood in the colony till after this date.