12 LOUIS AGASSIZ. [CHAP. i. 



and the cups were continually filled and emptied 

 during these very joyous and friendly repasts. For 

 it must be kept in mind that the same labourers used 

 to come every year, and the meetings were more or less 

 reunions of old acquaintances, always full of reminis- 

 cences of preceding years. 



Mingling so freely with the people round him, it 

 would seem that Louis must have become an expert 

 in horsemanship and the use of firearms, like almost 

 all young men raised in country places in Switzerland. 

 But this was not the case. Trusting to his great 

 powers of swimming, and led on by his love for 

 fish-catching, Louis was always ready to embark on 

 skiff or raft of any sort. But on land it was very 

 different. In Switzerland no one ever saw him on 

 horseback ; and it is doubtful if he ever tried to ride, 

 except once in Brazil. All his life he invariably de- 

 clined to mount horse or mule. As to shooting, he 

 never possessed firearms, and never joined a shooting 

 club, and probably never fired a single shot during his 

 life in Europe. He is a very remarkable exception among 

 the Swiss of the present century, for he never performed 

 any military service. The great "Tirs Federaux" never 

 attracted him, and his passion for natural history never 

 carried him so far as to shoot birds or animals of any 

 sort. 



Curiously enough, when a student at the universities 

 of Zurich, Heidelberg, and Munich, he became a great 

 fencer ; and one of his contemporaries and friends 

 writes me that Agassiz was an excellent swordsman, 

 using the rapier with great dexterity, and very ready 



