TOBOGGANING.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 4702, 26 May 1883, Page 3

TOBOGGANING.

A tobogganing hill should be as nearly per* pendicular as possible, with, at the bottom, a long, levol stretoh, over which the sled can fly with the impetus derived from its descent. Two or three passengers make a load, the lady or ladies being placed in front, and the steersman sitting behind. The toboggan having been placed on the verge of the preoipioe, the lady steps in and sits down with her feet against the stretcher, or diipooed in the curve, and her skirt tusked around her, and her escort sits down behind, having a short stick in each hand with which to steer. The steersman lets his hands trail on either side, and digs one stick or the other into the snow, according to the direction in which he wishes to turn the accursed craft. It is the correct thing to turn out in a blanket co*t and legging!, with mocaasing, and upon your head a red or blue to^ue—h Phrygian cap of worsted. Having bidden adieu to your friends, you gently push your frail sled oveir the brow of the hill and launch yourself into eternity. Such of your readers ai have evar fallen out of a balloon will have a good idea of the sensation of the amateur tobogganist duriDg his first elide. There is a sense of goneness in the head and the pit of the stomach, and the nether world rises up and hits you all over very hard. A slippery and elastio board with 300 pounds weight upon it, launohed down a hill of ice or snow a quarter of a mile long, or thereabouts, with an inclination of say seventy degrees, gathers a tremendous headway in the oourse of a few seconds ; the crisp diamond-dusty particles fly at your eyes like gpia-drift at sea before a hurricane, and a spray of shrieking silver is ground up by either steering stick. In a few seconds you reach the glaoii, and change the plane on which you move, the sled giving a bound that makes you think of riding a frisky dolphin ; then away it careers for hundreds of yards above the level, till finally it stops perhaps a mile away from the Btarting plaoe, allowing an admirable opportunity for flirting with your fair fare during the return walk. Of a bright, moonlit night, with the air keen and the heavens overflowing with stare, there-can be no more glorious sport. But it hsß its perils. If you lose your head and fail to keep that of the toboggan straight the eled will broach to and epill you and your fare down the hill, with a display of ground and lofty tumbling suoh as Greenwioh hill never witnessed on the j oiliest of fair days. Fortunate will you be if, while you and your dulcinea are for the moment standing on your respective heads, another toboggan does nob sweep down and take you in your respeotive midriffs with a force of say 144-foot tons. Or, still worse, in a long oourso, where there are trees to thread and maybe a gate or two to pass through, you may tilt head on into a post or a etately maple. Hot until you have been in suoh an acoident do you fairly understand what is meant by "matchwood " and "a dull thud." Luckily, as the lady is in iront she acts as a sort of buffer, but her lot under suoh oircumstanoes is not a happy one, as before she has fairly realised that she has been hurled agaisst a tree she receives jou in the baok with no less crushing emphasis.