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THi: POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



count of his voyage to those islands in 1745, remarks that the 

 game on stilts holds the first rank among the pleasures of the 

 Kanakas. On their stilts, he says, which raise them three or four 

 feet above the ground, they give themselves up to combats, and 

 great is the laughter that greets the fall of the awkward. These 

 contests are traditional at Namur, and constitute a kind of na- 

 tional tournament. The contestants form two parties. Each 

 camp is composed of seven or eight hundred combatants, with a 

 captain, officers, a banner, and a cockade. The stiltsmen come into 

 the grand square, announced by martial music. Each party occu- 

 pies its side of the place, waiting for the signal for opening. The 

 bells sound at every attack, flags fly from the windows, and a 

 crowd of spectators and friends attend to witness the sport. At 

 the giving of the signal the camps engage in the attack. At the 

 first meeting a large number of the contestants fall heavily to the 

 ground and lie there without being able to rise, exposed to being 



t>^^,\k4%^^ 



Fig. 3. — Ancient Contests of Stiltsmen at Namur. 



trodden upon unless some of the friends who accompany them — 

 wife, mother, or sister — come to their assistance, and lift them up 

 with considerable effort and often after unsuccessful attempts. 

 The contestant, set upon his stilts again, precipitates himself anew 

 into the fight, unless he has been hurt too badly hy liis first fall. 

 It is not necessary to add that these sports are often dangerous. 



The stiltsmen of Namur who gave representations before 

 Charles V, Peter the Great, and Bonaparte, preserve piously in 

 their archives and repeat witli pride the saying of Marshal Saxe, 

 that " if two armies should clash together with as much energy 

 as the youth of Namur, the affair would not be a battle, but a 

 butchery." 



