many a grazed skin, bloody cockscomb, and neglected
lesson. The toboggan is to the hurlie what the
sled is to the carriage; it is a hurlie upon runners;
and if for a grating road you substitute a long declivity
of beaten snow, you can imagine the giddy career of
the tobogganist. The correct position is to sit;
but the fantastic will sometimes sit hind-foremost,
or dare the descent upon their belly or their back.
A few steer with a pair of pointed sticks, but it
is more classical to use the feet. If the weight
be heavy and the track smooth, the toboggan takes
the bit between its teeth; and to steer a couple of
full-sized friends in safety requires not only judgment
but desperate exertion. On a very steep track,
with a keen evening frost, you may have moments almost
too appalling to be called enjoyment; the head goes,
the world vanishes; your blind steed bounds below
your weight; you reach the foot, with all the breath
knocked out of your body, jarred and bewildered as
though you had just been subjected to a railway accident.
Another element of joyful horror is added by the
formation of a train; one toboggan being tied to another,
perhaps to the number of half a dozen, only the first
rider being allowed to steer, and all the rest pledged
to put up their feet and follow their leader, with
heart in mouth, down the mad descent. This,
particularly if the track begins with a headlong plunge,
is one of the most exhilarating follies in the world,
and the tobogganing invalid is early reconciled to
somersaults.
There is all manner of variety in the nature of the
tracks, some miles in length, others but a few yards,
and yet like some short rivers, furious in their brevity.
All degrees of skill and courage and taste may be
suited in your neighbourhood. But perhaps the
true way to toboggan is alone and at night. First
comes the tedious climb, dragging your instrument
behind you. Next a long breathing-space, alone
with snow and pinewoods, cold, silent and solemn to
the heart. Then you push of; the toboggan fetches
way; she begins to feel the hill, to glide, to, swim,
to gallop. In a breath you are out from under
the pine trees, and a whole heavenful of stars reels
and flashes overhead. Then comes a vicious effort;
for by this time your wooden steed is speeding like
the wind, and you are spinning round a corner, and
the whole glittering valley and all the lights in
all the great hotels lie for a moment at your feet;
and the next you are racing once more in the shadow
of the night with close-shut teeth and beating heart.
Yet a little while and you will be landed on the
highroad by the door of your own hotel. This,
in an atmosphere tingling with forty degrees of frost,
in a night made luminous with stars and snow, and girt
with strange white mountains, teaches the pulse an
unaccustomed tune and adds a new excitement to the
life of man upon his planet.
