"Professor" Charles W. Oldrieve has faithfully performed the feat of walking on the water from Hull to Boston, a distance of about nine milec, He had rough water, too, in coming through Hull Gnt, and darkness added in crossing the harbour. He walks on shoes or little boats that are each two feet two inches long, ten inchea wide and fourteen inches deep, and each is furnished with three wings or flappers on the bottom, which are arranged on hing6B and fastened so ttiat when the foot is brought forward and the shoe forced through the water 'hey lie ilat up against th 6 bottom of the shoe until the step is taken, when they drop down and present a surface to press against the water. As to the pace or ease of walking arrived at by the Professor, we cannot 9peak highly. He labours mightily as he goes, and he goes slowly. We cannot see any earthly use in his achievement, if it stop where it is at present. But it will not slop here. Jhe Professor has heard that fatal singiDg in his ears that lures so many athletic luminaries to their fate. He has been to Niagara, longingly looking at the great rapids below the falls, that have tossed, and torn, and gulfed all the strong swimmers who have ever dared their surging progress. The Professor thinks he can walk safely where poor Webb, the swimmer, was smothered in the airtilled river. He does not know that the leaping waters ot the great rapid, that pile and interplait themselves with thunderous div, are aim' st as much air as water, that the swimmer sinks in their embrace an I is suffocated because they cannot suppoit his weight as water, nor toed his lungs as air. Professor Oldrieve might as well try to walk on soap-suds as on the rapids of Niagara. But he will go, poor fellow, and make the attempt, and we shall have no one to walk on the turbulent but- honest solidity of the waves that once took the taxed sea into loving fuendship. " I shall try the Niagara rapids in June of next year," says the fatuous professor, " with my large shoes."— Pilot.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZT18891004.2.50
Bibliographic details
New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVII, Issue 24, 4 October 1889, Page 31
Word Count
370Untitled New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVII, Issue 24, 4 October 1889, Page 31
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