But The Peculiar Outdoor Sport Of This District Is
Tobogganing.
A Scotchman may remember the low flat board, with the
front wheels on a pivot, which was called a
Hurlie; he may remember
this contrivance, laden with boys, as, laboriously started, it ran
rattling down the brae, and was, now successfully, now
unsuccessfully, steered round the corner at the foot; he may
remember scented summer evenings passed in this diversion, and 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.
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