IN THE SADDLE

AMID the grind of the Machine Age, U.S. sportsmen still revere and enjoy the horse. Most of their excitement comes from racing (some 600 tracks with 50 million customers a year), but to a lot of Americans the horse means homier, less high-pitched forms of sport.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans ride for pleasure. Though Long Island, Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky still maintain hunts, riding even in the East and South is no longer primarily a pink-coated, exclusive affair; it has acquired much of the West's dungaree-clad casualness. The better-heeled riders maintain their own mounts -- at $40 to $80 a month for feed and shelter. But most ride horses they do not own. They pay up to $3.50 an hour to canter adventurously over bri dle paths in city parks or $150 a week to rough it in dude ranches from Connecticut to California.

Polo, no longer merely a rich man's hobby, has spread from the East to Texas and California, with the box-office instead of coupon-clipping to defray expenses.

Some 600 annual rodeos and horse shows pull in crowds from Madison Square Gar den to San Francisco's Cow Palace, to display the best in riders and animals.

Like the Ships. Today's U.S. breeds used for pleasure riding -- the Morgan, quarter-horse, five-gaited saddle horse --were developed out of need and necessity.

For more than 250 years, the horse was to America what the sailing ship was to the British Empire: carrier of arms and men, of commerce, of mail. Harnessed to the plow, the horse helped the frontiersman turn wilderness into civilization.

None of the U.S. breeds springs from native stock. The prehistoric horse, struck by disasters still unknown, was extinct in North America 300 centuries before Co lumbus. It was the great navigator him self who brought the first 25 horses, probably of Arabian ancestry, to the New World, landing at Santo Domingo on his second voyage in 1493. The Indians, terrified by the strange beasts, were easily routed. Later, the western Indians caught on, stole horses from Spanish conquerors, rode and bred them for war and hunting.

Two centuries of scanty forage and harsh climate produced the Indians' own horse:

the fast, hardy mustang.

The Horse Age. After the arrival of the English colonists, tidewater Virginia became the prime breeding ground for fine horses and fox-hunting cavaliers. Like most plantation owners, George Washing ton built a big stable (130 horses) and a reputation as a breeder, once raced his Arabian thoroughbred Magnolia against a roan colt owned by Thomas Jefferson at Alexandria's Jockey Club. (Magnolia lost.) From New England came the fast little Narragansett pacer (one was ridden by Paul Revere) and the Morgan horse whose progeny, crossbred with other strains, produced every type from draft horses to racing trotters.

As settlers filled up the West, they adapted their breeds, e.g., the cowboy's quarter-horse, the gentleman farmer's Tennessee walking horse, the American saddle horse, to suit the jobs at hand. The famed Pony Express brought 500 top-quality horses, ranging from three-quarter English thoroughbreds to golden California palomino mustangs, to supply relays for the rugged 2,000-mile route from St. Joseph, Mo., over the Rockies and west to Sacramento. Calif.

Mechanization has driven the horse from the cities, big farms, and the U.S. Cavalry. But it remains a surprisingly useful asset: almost 4,000,000 horses survive on U.S. farms and ranches. Together with the 150,000 saddle horses ridden for pleasure, they stand as living monuments to America's great, well-remembered Horse Age.

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