they appear to
be more hardy, and have much better hoofs, than ours in England;
throwing a shoe therefore is not of the same consequence as it is with
us, for a horse will go twenty miles afterwards with little injury. In
Virginia and Kentucky the horses are almost all thorough-bred, and from
the best English stock.--The distances run in racing are much longer
than ours, and speed without bottom is useless.

The Americans are very fond of fast trotting horses; I do not refer to
rackers, as they term horses that trot before and gallop behind, but
fair trotters, and they certainly have a description of horse that we
could not easily match in England. At New York, the Third Avenue, as
they term it, is the general rendezvous, I once went out there mounted
upon Paul Pry, who was once considered the fastest horse in America; at
his full speed he performed a mile in two minutes and thirty seconds,
equal to twenty-four miles per hour. He took me at this devil of a pace
as far as Hell Gate; not wishing "to intrude," I pulled up there, and
went home again. A pair of horses in harness were pointed out to me who
could perform the mile in two minutes fifty seconds. They use here
light four-wheeled vehicles which they call wagons, with a seat in the
front for two persons and room for your luggage behind; and in these
wagons, with a pair of horses, they think nothing of trotting them
seventy or eighty miles in a day, at the speed of twelve miles an hour;
I have seen the horses come in, and they did not appear to suffer from
the fatigue. You seldom see a horse bent forward, but they are all
daisy cutters.

The gentlemen of New York give very high prices for fast horses; 1,000
dollars is not by any means an uncommon price. In a country where time
is every thing, they put a proportionate value upon speed. Paul Pry is
a tall grey horse (now thirteen years old); to look at, he would not
fetch 10 pounds,--the English omnibuses would refuse him.

Talking about omnibuses, those of New York, and the other cities in
America, are as good and as well regulated as those of Paris; the larger
ones have four horses. Not only their omnibuses, but their hackney
coaches are very superior to those in London; the latter are as clean as
private carriages; and with the former there is no swearing, no
dislocating the arms of poor females, hauling them from one omnibus to
the other,--but civility without servility.

The American stage-coaches ar