By Ashland Wilkes, pacing record 2:00½, 1896.]
It is very evident from the statistics of size and gait, as given in the chapters referred to above, that our forefathers wisely selected the most compact, strong and hardy animals they could find in England as the type best adapted to fight their way against the hardships of a life in the wilderness of the new world. There have been some attempts, wholly fanciful and baseless, to trace importations from other countries, outside of those mentioned above, but all such attempts have proven wholly imaginary and worse than futile. In less than twenty years after the New England colonies received their first supply they commenced shipping horses by the cargo to Barbadoes and other West India Islands. This trade was cultivated, extended to all the islands, and continued during the remainder of the seventeenth and practically the whole of the eighteenth century. The pacers of the American colonies were exceedingly popular and sought after by the Spanish as well as the Dutch and English islands. Indeed, the planters of Cuba alone carried away at high prices nearly all the pacers that New England could produce. They knew nothing about pacers for the saddle until they had tried them and then they would have nothing else. These continuous raids of the Spaniards of the West Indies upon the pacers of New England, and Rhode Island especially, has been assigned, by the local historians of that State as one of the principal causes of the decadence and practically final disappearance of the Narragansett pacer from the seat of his triumphs and his fame. It is just to remark here, in passing, that if there had been pacers among the horses of Spain, the Spanish dependencies would have secured their supplies from the mother country and not have come to Rhode Island and paid fabulous prices for them.
As all the pacing traditions of this country to-day point to the horses of Narragansett Bay as the source from which our modern pacers have derived their speed, we must give some attention to the various theories that have been advanced as to the origin of the Narragansett horse. In time past, and extending back to a period “whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary,” the horse world has been cursed with a class of men who have always been ready to invent and put in circulation the most marvelous and incredible stories about the origin of every remarkable horse that has appeared. Some of these wiseacres have maintained that the original Narragansett pacer was caught wild in the woods by the first settlers on Narragansett Bay, while others (and this seems to be of Canadian origin) have insisted that when being brought to this country a storm struck the ship and the horse was thrown overboard, and after nine days he was found off the coast of Newfoundland quietly eating rushes on a sand bar, where he was rescued and brought into Narragansett Bay. This story of the marine horse probably had its origin in the experiences of Rip Van Dam, which will be narrated further on. Another representation, coming this time from a very reputable source, has been made as to the origin of the Narragansett horse, and as many, no doubt, have accepted it as true, I must give it such consideration as its prominence demands. Mr. I. T. Hazard, a representative of the very old and prominent Hazard family of Rhode Island, in a letter to the Rev. Mr. Updike, makes the following statement: