irOW TO PREVENT DROWNING. 371 



mare, but, when the mare was not to hand, he took the first horse that 

 offered. 



The loss of life from shipYVTeck, boatmg, bathing, skating, fishing, 

 and accidental immersion is so disastrously great, that every feasible pro- 

 cedure calculated to avert it ought to be had recourse to. People will 

 not consent to wear life-preservers, but, if they only knew that in their 

 own limbs, properly used, they possessed the most efficient of life-pre- 

 servers, they would most likely avail themselves of them. In every 

 school, every house, there ought to be a slate tank of sufficient depth, 

 with a trickle of water at one end and a sij^hon at the other, in order 

 to keep the contents pure. A pail or two of hot water would at any 

 time render the contents sufficiently warm. In such a tank every 

 child from the time it could walk ought to be made to tread water 

 daily. Every adult, when the opportunity presents itself, should do 

 so. The printed injunction should be pasted up on all boat-houses, 

 on every boat, at every bathing-place, and in every school. " Tread 

 water when you find yourself out of your depth " is all that need be 

 said, unless, indeed, we add, " Float when you are tired." Every one, 

 of whatever age or sex, or h6wever encumbered with clothing, might 

 tread water with at least as much facility, even in a breaking sea, as a 

 four-footed animal does. The position of a person who treads water 

 is, in other respects, very much safer, and better than is the sprawling 

 attitude which we assume in ordinary swimming. And then the beauty 

 of it is that we can tread water without any preliminary teaching, 

 whereas " to swim " involves time and pains, entails considerable 

 fatigue, and is very seldom adequately acquired, after all. 



The Indians on the Missouri River, when they have occasion to 

 traverse that impetuous stream, invariably tread water just as the dog 

 treads it. The natives of Joanna, an island on the coast of Madagas- 

 car, young persons of both sexes, walk the water, carrying fruit and 

 vegetables to ships becalmed, or it may be lying-to, in the offing miles 

 away. Some Kroomen, whose canoe upset before my eyes in the sea- 

 way on the coast of Africa, walked the water, to the safe-keeping of 

 their lives, with the utmost facility ; and I witnessed negro children 

 on other occasions doing so at a very tender age. At Madras, watch- 

 ing their opportunity, messengers, with letters secured in an oil-skin 

 cap, plunge into the boiling surf, and make their way, treading the 

 water, to the vessels outside, through a sea in which an ordinary Euro- 

 pean boat will not live. At the Cape of Good Hope men used to pro- 

 ceed to the vessels in the offing through the mountain-billows, treading 

 the water as they went with the utmost security. And yet here, on 

 our own shores, and amid smooth waters, men, women, and children 

 perish like flies annually, when a little properly-directed effort tread- 

 ing the water as I have said would haply suffice to rescue them every 

 one. Nature. 



