HOOTING NIAGARA RAPIDS N A BARREL.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 7652, 27 August 1886, Page 3

HOOTING NIAGARA RAPIDS N A BARREL.

(Per San Francisco Hail.)

The New York correspondent of the Standard gives the following account of the shooting of the Niagara rapids :—" A man named Carlisle D. Graham, a cooper, of British birth, resolved on the day he heard of Captain Webb's death to attempt to pass through the rapids of Niagara river. He succeeded in his rash enterprise on Sunday. The only precedent is the escape of the steamer Maid of the Mist from the sheriff's pursuit in 1861 by shooting the rapids below the falls. Graham built a barrel 7ft high, having a diameter of 23in. Two feet below (lie top the diameter was 33in. The staves composing the barrel were of oak, 2-.Hn thick, and they were bound together by 34 iron hoops, This curious vessel was so ballasted that it would swim upright, and had a manhole in the top. A sack on the side for the body was stayed with short ropes, 'ihe course of the barrel was very erratic, as may bo imagined. After it was submerged it was scarcely ever upright, and was dashed about with tremendous violence, bat escaped being driven upon the rooks or being detained in the whirlpool. When Graham ventured to open the manhole when his dangerous journey was over, he emerged dizzy but unharmed. He declares his conlirlenb belief thathecan go over thefalls themselves with safety. Half an hour after his relt ase, having recovered from his exhaustion, Graham thus told his story:—"l was that rattled with getting off in a hurry that I didn't plug the airhole, and when I tried to do it afterwards I conld'ut do it. I couldn't see, of course, but I could feel. Under the bridges I felt mighty queer. When I struck that place where I got to where water breaks and went under, it just poured in at the open airhole. It was awful hot in there when I was drifting slowly up above, but the water cooled mo and did not wet me much, for, you see, I was inside the canvas. When I got to, the whirlpool I took off the cover and could see out, but I was carried along so fast that I put it on again in a hurry. I then got dizzy with the rolling over, and pretty sick in my stomach, In the Devil's Holo rapids I got the worst shaking up; then I was all right enough till they pulled me out. 1 never want to try it again for fun ; I'll do it again for money pretty quick."