e more than two
minutes and a good deal less than three minutes. I have often upon
the larger pacing horses rode fifty, nay sixty miles a day even in
New England where the roads are rough, stony and uneven."

In the realm of fiction we find testimony to the qualities of the
Narragansett Pacers. Cooper, in the "Last of the Mohicans," represents
his heroines as mounted on these horses, and explains their
characteristics in a footnote, and also in the dialogue of the story. He
says that they were commonly sorrel-colored, and that horses of other
breeds were trained to their gait. It is true that horses were trained
to pace. Rev. Mr. Thatcher wrote in 1690 of teaching a mare to amble by
cross-spanning, and again by trammelling. Logs of wood were placed
across a road at certain intervals to induce a pacing gait. As late as
the year 1770 men in Ipswich followed the profession of pace-trainer;
but I doubt whether any other breed could ever acquire the peculiar gait
of the Narragansetts, of which Isaac Hazard thus wrote: "My father
described the motion of this horse as differing from others in that its
backbone moved through the air in a straight line without inclining the
rider from side to side, as does a rocker or pacer of the present day."
That motion could scarcely be taught.

Many traits joined to make the Narragansett Pacers so eagerly sought
for. Not only was their ease of motion an absolute necessity, but
sureness of foot was also indispensable; this quality they also
possessed. They were also tough and enduring, and could travel long
distances. The stories told of them seem incredible. It was said that
they could travel one hundred miles in a day, over rough roads, without
tiring the rider or injury to themselves, provided they were properly
cared for at the end of the journey.

There was not only in America a steady demand for these horses, but in
the West Indies, as Hull predicted, they found a ready market. One
farmer sent annually a hundred pacers to Cuba, and agents were sent to
Narragansett from Cuba with orders to buy pacers, especially
full-blooded mares, at any prices. Agents from Virginia also purchased
pacers for Virginian horse-raisers. The newspapers of the latter part of
the eighteenth century--especially of the Connecticut press--abound in
advertisements of horses of the "true Narragansett breed," yet it is
said that in the year 1800 but one full-blooded Narragansett Pacer was
known to