THE EARLY DAYS OF THE HORSE IN AMERICA
Why the horse, the fossil remains of which are found so abundantly
in the middle West of this country that these places are known in
the Scientific world as "Equus Beds," became extinct, there being
no horses here at the time of the Spanish Conquest, is a mystery.
It is the more remarkable, for when the horse was introduced
here and ran wild in South America and Texas, he increased and
multiplied rapidly, showing that the climate, food, and general
conditions were exceptionally well adapted to him.
Various animals have been used as beasts of burden, and even as
cavalry, all over the world. In the old days of Cape Town, the
Hottentots broke their oxen to the saddle and used them even for
cavalry purposes in time of war.
In a report of the Treasurer-general of Peru, written in 1544, it
is stated that the Spaniards even in those days used the large
sheep or llama of that country both as beasts of burden and to ride.
The first importation of horses into the new world, credited by
authentic history, was made by Columbus in 1493, when he landed in
what is now known as San Domingo with seventeen vessels.
When Cortes landed at what is now known as Vera Cruz, having sailed
thither from Cuba, he had with him the first horses that any man
had ever seen in the Western hemisphere, and this was in 1519. The
Indians thought these visitors were from the sun, and that the
horses were fabulous creatures of incomparable prowess, and brought
offerings of bread and flesh to them.
Later, in the bloody wars of Mexico and Peru, the war-horses, whose
riders were slain, escaped and reproduced themselves rapidly in the
great and luxurious plains, well provided with food and water and
in a climate especially suited to them.
De Soto had horsemen with him on his expedition when he discovered
the Mississippi River, and doubtless many of the horses were
left behind to run wild when the survivors of that disastrous
expedition, without their leader, returned in rough boats and rafts.
It is thought by some investigators that the horses found by Cabot
in La Plata in 1530 could not have been imported, but this is
highly improbable. There is practically no doubt but that the wild
horse of America is a direct descendant of the Spanish horse, and
therefore of the selfsame blood, which later made the thoroughbred
in England, and the trotter in the United States, the fleetest and
most valuable of their race.
The first importation of horses into what is now the United States
was in 1527 by Cabeza de Vaca; these, forty-two in number, were
brought to Florida, but through accident, disease, and ill-usage,
all of them died.
The next importation was by De Soto from Spain, and these no doubt
were the progenitors of our wild horses of the West and Southwest.
In 1625, the Honorable Pieter Evertsen Hueft agreed to ship,
and did ship, to Manhattan Island, one hundred head of cattle,
including a certain number of stallions and mares. These horses
were of the Flanders breed, from which descended the Conestoga
horse, afterwards justly prized in Pennsylvania.
The first horses came to Massachusetts probably in 1629. At
any rate, we know that Governor Winthrop, writing on board the
_Arabella_, at Cowes, March 28, 1630, says: "We are in all our
eleven ships about seven hundred persons and 240 cows and about
sixty horses."
English horses were landed at Jamestown, Virginia, as early as
1609, and there is a tradition that the first horse to land in
Canada was brought to Tadousac in 1647.
As early as 1641-2 we read of horses and carts crossing Boston
harbor on the ice, so severe was the winter of that year. In 1636,
when the Reverend Thomas Hooker and his followers left the colony
to found Hartford, Mrs. Hooker, so a letter of that date reads,
was carried in a horse-litter. But the diligence and care of these
first settlers in New England is nowhere more clearly shown, than
by the fact that already, in 1640, Governor Winthrop writes of
shipping eighty horses from Boston to the Barbadoes. Hardly had
they imported horses for themselves before they were breeding them
and shipping them to other parts of the world.
These horses were not of very valuable stock. As early as 1650 a
young mare with her second or third foal was valued at about $60;
a five or six year old stallion at about $55--this in Manhattan.
In New England, where cattle were especially abundant, horses were
worth about one-third less.
This is accounted for by the fact that horses in England even as
late as the beginning of the eighteenth century were held in low
esteem at home, where they were valued at about fifty shillings
each. The better class of horses in England at this time were
brought from Barbary or from Flanders. The well-known saying,
"The gray mare is the better horse," arose from the recognized
superiority of the gray mares from Flanders over the English horses
of that date.
Even as late as 1700, dogs harnessed to small trucks did most of
the teaming in the narrow and badly paved streets of the English
towns, and were by no means uncommon in London for many years after
that time.
One may judge of the condition of the roads, and the difficulties
of transportation, by the charges. Seven pounds sterling a ton was
charged for transportation from London to Birmingham; and twelve
pounds sterling a ton from London to Exeter. Coal in those days was
unknown except in the districts where it was mined, owing to the
fact that the transportation of coal over the roads as they then
were in England, would have made the price prohibitive.
The demand for the better class of horses in England at the time of
the earlier importations of these animals to America, was mainly
for the army, and for heavy horses to pull the carriages and heavy
travelling coaches of the nobility and gentry. Such horses as were
needed for these purposes were pretty generally imported from
Barbary and Arabia, and from Flanders.
There seems to have been, however, a native horse in Great Britain;
for Cæsar notes the fact that the Britons drove war-chariots.
William the Conqueror, who represents to England genealogically
what the _Mayflower_ represents to America, gave to a certain Simon
St. Liz, a Norman friend of his, the entire town of Northampton
and the whole hundred of Falkley, then valued at £40 a year, "to
provide shoes for his horses."
From 1066 to the close of the twelfth century there was renewal
and improvement of the British horse by importations from the
continent, and also by stray animals brought back by the Crusaders
under Richard and others; but such improvements of the native breed
as these importations imply were of small importance, and without
system or aim of any kind.
During the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, important
legislation looking to the care and breeding of horses was passed,
and when James I., who was fond of racing, came to the throne, he
bought from a Mr. Markham an Arabian stallion, afterwards always
known as the "Markham Arabian," paying for him what was for those
days the extravagant amount of five hundred guineas.
This purchase by King James marks the beginning of high-class
breeding in England. From then on, down through the reigns of
Charles I., Charles II., and William III., not to mention Oliver
Cromwell who raced horses with the same enthusiasm that he sang
psalms, many horses were imported, much interest was taken in
racing and breeding, and for the last three hundred years, from
1603, when James came to the throne, till now, England has been
the home of, probably, the best horses in the world, and nothing
pleases her people as a whole more than to have the reigning
sovereign win the Derby.
The first volume of the English Stud Book, then known as the "Match
Book," was published in 1808, and from then on we have had a more
or less orderly sequence of breeding history, and the English
thoroughbred race-horse, the progenitor at one time or another
of the best types of horses in this country, became a recognized
standard of horse.
Our own horse history may be said to begin at the beginning of the
nineteenth century. The Treaty of Peace with Great Britain was
signed in Paris, July 3, 1783, and the British troops left November
25. The population of the United States at that time was less than
four millions, about the number of people settled in and around New
York City to-day.
The carriage roads of Boston were unpaved; and marked off by a
line of posts and gutters, and laid with ill-assorted pebbles. The
horseman who rode too fast over these pebbles, and thus threatened
their disarrangement, was fined three shillings and fourpence.
The mail was carried between Boston and New York thrice a week in
summer, and twice a week in winter, taking six days in summer
and often nine days in winter, and all carried in one pair of
saddle-bags. The post-riders knitted mittens and stockings as their
horses jogged along over the well-known roads.
The very first coach and four in New England began running in 1744,
and the first coach and four between New York and Philadelphia, the
two most populous cities in the colonies, was put on in 1756 and
accomplished the journey in three days.
Two stages and twelve horses carried all the goods and passengers
between New York and Boston, doing forty miles a day in summer, and
scarce twenty-five miles a day in winter. Josiah Quincy, writing at
this time, tells us that he once spent thirty days in his own coach
going from Boston to Washington.
The streets of New York were so badly paved that Benjamin Franklin
was wont to say that you could distinguish a New York man in
Philadelphia by the awkward way in which he shuffled over the
smoother pavements of the latter city.
There were but three roads out of New York in those days: the
Knightsbridge road, a continuation of the Bowery Lane, which went
to Knightsbridge and thence along the river to Albany; the old
Boston post-road, which started from the neighborhood of what is
now Madison Square, thence to Harlem, and then east toward Boston;
and the so-called middle road, direct to Harlem.
In the southernmost states there were no public conveyances of any
kind except a stage-coach between Charleston and Savannah.
It is only one hundred years ago, only the span of two lives, and
the population has grown from four millions to eighty millions; the
gross receipts from postage from $320,000 (the gross receipts for
the year ending October 1, 1801) to over $121,000,000 in 1902. The
total estimate for the expenses of the city of New York in 1800 was
for $130,000.
These were the days when the fashionable assemblies were advertised
to "open with a Passe-Pie and end with the Sarabund à l'Espagnole";
days when eight bags of cotton were seized by the officers of
the customs in England, because it was claimed no such enormous
amount of cotton could have come from America; days when, so writes
Josiah Quincy at any rate, the minister alone had white bread, "for
brown bread gave him heart-burn, and he could not preach upon it;"
and it was some fifty years later even than this, before we had
the wheel-plough of iron, the reaper and binder, the drill, the
hay-rake, and the corn-cutter.
There was little leisure, and little money to be devoted to sport
of any kind, and the horse and the dog existed in New England, at
least, in varieties little suited to sport.
In the South it was somewhat different. A jockey-club was organized
in Charleston, South Carolina, as early as 1735, and there was
horse-racing in Maryland, Virginia, and other Southern states for
years before the Revolution.
In New England, on the contrary, racing was strictly forbidden on
moral and religious grounds. No such thing as a running-race could
be tolerated by the Puritans of that section. As a consequence of
this, we may trace the pedigree of the American trotting-horse
straight to Archbishop Laud, who having infuriated the Puritans to
the point of desiring emigration for themselves and their families
to the new world, they founded New England.
The scandalous levity and apparently papal leanings of Charles and
Laud were not to be permitted for a moment in their new home, and
pretty much all amusements were frowned upon. But the Cromwellian
love of a fast horse survived in some of his fellow-Puritans living
in New England, and men trained to the theological hair-splitting
of that day made a distinction between horses _trotting_ in
friendly competition between church-members and horses _running_
for money prizes!
"Thou shalt not covet, but tradition
Approves all forms of competition."
Two horses trotting down the streets of Hingham, Massachusetts,
and one, perhaps, going a little faster than the other, would
hardly lead even the godly Rev. Ebenezer Gay to suppose that he was
looking on at the beginnings of the sport of trotting-races, and
that a mare called Goldsmith Maid would win for her owners over
$200,000 between 1866 and 1878 at this same sport. Strangely as
it may read, there is little doubt but that Puritan principles or
prejudices, as you please, gave the impetus to the development of
the trotting-horse. Horses used for racing had always run, but when
it was discovered that horses could also be raced at a trot, those
that showed speed at this gait were used to breed from, and pains
were taken to develop their speeding qualities. Hence it is not
flippant humor that traces the trotting-horse back to Laud.
"_Fast Trotting._--Yesterday afternoon the Haerlem race-course
of _one mile distance_, was trotted around in _two minutes_ and
_fifty-nine seconds_ by a horse called Yankey, from New Haven;
a rate of speed, it is believed, never before excelled in this
country, and fully equal to anything recorded in the English
sporting calendars."--From the _Connecticut Journal_, June 19,
1806.
The first trotting-match of which there is any authentic account
was in 1818, when Boston Blue was produced to win the wager, that
no horse could trot a mile in three minutes, and won it; what
the amount was is not stated. From that time on, trotting horses
against one another and against time became a popular amusement. In
1834, Andrew Jackson trotted a mile in 2 minutes 42½ seconds; in
1858, Ethan Allen trotted a mile in 2 minutes 28 seconds; in 1859,
Flora Temple trotted a mile in 2 minutes 19¾ seconds; in 1874,
Mambrino Gift lowered the record to 2 minutes and 20 seconds; in
1874, the famous Goldsmith Maid trotted a mile in 2 minutes and 14
seconds.
In 1843 there were only two horses that could trot a mile under
2 minutes and 30 seconds; while in 1881 there were over twelve
hundred horses with records of 2 minutes 30 seconds or better.
Trotting in those early days was mostly under saddle, and some
of the races were even three miles in length. Since about 1850
trotting-races have been over a mile stretch, best three in five
heats.
It is noted as a curious fact in the history of the trotting-horse
that Messenger, who served a number of thoroughbred mares, served a
far larger number of cold-blooded mares, and it was in these latter
that the trotting instinct was almost invariably developed. This
is repeated through the trotting register--almost no thoroughbreds
have been trotting dams. Palo Alto is about the only half-breed
that was a successful trotter, and one campaign finished him.
Messenger was imported in 1792 and was at stud in New York and in
Philadelphia for many years.
The first known importation of a thoroughbred to America was that
of a horse called Bully Rock, by the Darley Arabian, out of a mare
by the Byerly Turk, brought over to Virginia in 1730. A number
of Derby winners were imported to America before 1800, including
Diomed, the winner of the first Derby in 1780, Saltram, John Bull,
Spread Eagle, Sir Harry, and others.
It must not be forgotten in dealing with the subject of driving
that not only the history of the harness-horse in America is all
very modern history, but that the condition of the roads and the
state of the carriage-building trade prevented any great progress
until lately.
Carriages, indeed, were hardly an ordinary article of manufacture
until late in the reign of Charles II., or about 1675. It is
maintained that a rough coach or wagon ran as a public conveyance
between Edinburgh and Leith as early as 1610, but little is known
on the subject. The in-little-things-omniscient Pepys writes in his
diary under date of 1665 of springs on certain carriages. But coach
and carriage-building had not progressed very far till later than
this. The state coach of George III., 1762, weighed four tons, was
24 feet long, 8 feet 3 inches wide, 12 feet high, and had a pole
12 feet long. "Hansom's Patent Safety Cab" did not appear until
1834.
In the spring of 1669, a coach, described as the "Flying Coach,"
went from Oxford to London in one day, a distance now covered in an
hour and three-quarters by rail. This Flying Coach departed on its
first trip from Oxford surrounded by the dignitaries of the town
and the university, and was welcomed in London by no less imposing
official personages.
With this coach and others to follow, began all sorts of objections
to conveyances going at this rate of speed. It was contended that
they would spoil the roads, ruin the inns along the route by not
stopping at them, and do great harm to the breed of horses by
promoting speed at the expense of bone and weight.
It is curious to think that even the first mail-coach was
criticised on much the same grounds as the first railroad trains.
There was little danger either in England or in America of unduly
fast travel with horses and vehicles in their then condition.
Even now in the United States the condition of the roads, except in
and around the wealthier cities, is deplorable. In the last quarter
of a century in this country we have built 132,865 miles of steam
railway and we now have 203,133 miles of railroad. During the past
fifteen years we have built some 23,000 miles of trolley road; we
have spent in ten years $176,226,934 for the improvement of rivers
and harbors, but for the inland farmer almost nothing has been done
to give him good wagon roads. There are 74,097 miles of public
highway in the state of New York alone.
It is calculated that $1.15 will haul a ton--
Five miles on a common road,
Twelve and one-half to fifteen miles on a well-made road,
Twenty-five miles on a trolley road,
Two hundred and fifty miles on a steam railway,
One thousand miles on a steamship.
France has 23,603 miles of wagon roads built and maintained by the
government. Italy has some 5000 miles of road built and maintained
by the government. Here in the United States, where more and more
depends upon the ability of the farmers, small and large, to get
their produce quickly and safely to market, nothing has been done
as yet by the Federal government. It is worth knowing that a pair
of horses drawing a load of 4000 pounds on a level road with a
certain effort, can only draw with the same effort--
3600 pounds on a road with a grade of 1 foot rise in 100 feet,
3200 pounds on a road with a grade of 1 foot rise in 50 feet,
2880 pounds on a road with a grade of 1 foot rise in 40 feet,
2160 pounds on a road with a grade of 1 foot rise in 25 feet,
1600 pounds on a road with a grade of 1 foot rise in 20 feet.
It is worth knowing, too, that careful experiments prove that wide
tires--3 to 4 inches--are lighter in their draught than narrow
tires. That they are better for the road is very apparent. The
wider tires act almost as a stonecrusher, and actually help to keep
roads in repair.
In Austria, all wagons carrying a load of more than 2¼ tons are
obliged by law to have wheels with rims 4⅓ inches wide.
In France, the tires of wheels on wagons used for carrying heavy
loads are from 4 to 6 inches wide and some of them as much as 10
inches wide. In France, too, the rear axles on such wagons are made
from 12 to 14 inches wider than the front axles, so that the rear
wheels run outside the track of the front wheels, thus making a
very effective road improver of every heavy wagon.
In Germany, the law requires that all wagons carrying heavy loads
shall have tires to their wheels at least 4 inches wide.
It is now within the jurisdiction of boards of supervisors, in the
state of New York at least, to enact laws regulating the width of
tires on heavy wagons.
What good roads and wide tires and properly cared for and properly
harnessed and handled horses would mean to us, in this, now the
greatest agricultural and manufacturing country in the world, is
almost beyond calculation.
[Illustration: PLATE V.--TEETH OF HORSE]