It has been said that the reckless exportation to the West Indies caused this extermination, but it is difficult to believe that so shrewd a race as were the Narragansett planters ever would have committed such a killing of a goose of golden eggs. The decay of the race was the action of a simple law-cause and effect. The conditions which rendered the pacer so desirable did not exist after the Revolution. Roads were improved, carriages became common, the saddle less used, and the American trotter was evolved, who was a better carriage horse, and a more useful one, as he could be employed for both light and heavy work, while heavy draughting stiffened the joints of the pacer, and destroyed the very qualities for which he was most valued. Thus, being no longer needed, the Narragansett Pacer ceased to exist.

There died in Wickford, R. I., a few years ago, a Narragansett Pacer that was nearly full blooded. She was a villainously ugly animal of faded, sunburnt sorrel color. She was so abnormally broad-backed and broad-bodied that a male rider who sat astride her was forced to stick his legs out at a most awkward and ridiculous angle. That broad back carried, however, most comfortably a side-saddle or a pillion. Being extremely short-legged this treasured relic was unprecedentedly slow, and altogether I found the Narragansett Pacer, though an object of great pride and even veneration to her owner, not all my fancy had painted her.

From the earliest days when horses were imported, women rode on pillions behind the men. Lechford in his note-book refers to a " womans pillion " lost on the Hopewell. A pillion was a cushion strapped on behind a man's saddle, and from it sometimes hung a small platform or double stirrup on which a woman rider could rest her feet. One horse was sometimes made also to carry two men riding astride. Horseflesh was also economized by the ride-and-tie system : two persons would start on horseback, ride a mile or two, dismount, tie the animal by the road side, leaving him for another couple (who had started afoot) to mount, ride on past the first couple, and dismount and tie in their turn.

Coaches were not a wholly popular means of conveyance in the first half of the seventeenth century, even among Englishmen on English roads, and they would have been wholly useless in New England. John Winthrop had one in 1685. Sir Edmund and Lady Andros rode in a coach in Boston in 1687, and there were then a few other carriages in town. Their purchase and use were deplored and discouraged by Puritan authorities, as were other luxurious fashions. Outside of the town wheeled vehicles were of little use