with full liberty to repose by floating, without
touching land or aid. A quarter of a mile is a
good swim; a furlong is not bad. In cases of
life and death, power of endurance is mostly
of greater practical utility than speed. Speed
may enable you to save another—to reach a
drowning man before he sinks; endurance,
presence of mind, and the tenacious quality
expressed by "never say die," may often prove
the means of saving yourself.

Had I a son to teach to swim, I would advise
him to eschew corks, bladders, and the supporting
hands of bathing companions under the chin,
as well as sustaining straps held by the swimming
master at the end of a pole. All those aids
inspire false confidence, which fails when the
support is withdrawn. Such supports have
even their dangers. Corks, bladders, and straps,
sometimes slip from under the armpits to the
waist, or the legs; and the learner drowns,
unless assisted. There have been swimming
masters so imbecile as purposely to cause this
accident to their pupils, for the pleasure of
helping them out of it. But the grand point
is to get the learner to trust and depend
entirely on himself. But, surely, half drowning
them is not the way to inspire beginners with
confidence. With beginners, any trick or
surprise—such as pushing each other down, or
even dashing water unexpectedly in each other's
faces—is extremely foolish and untoward. It
is a thoughtless joke, and may give rise to
deep-rooted fears, which reason can never
overcome.

In swimming, every cause of alarm should be
carefully guarded against. Thus, in diving, if,
when eight or ten feet under water, you open
your eyes and look up, the surface appears much
nearer than it really is. It is an optical deception
of which you are perfectly aware in your
cooler moments, when looking down into clear
water instead of out of it. You make the requisite
effort to rise, and seem not to rise so quickly
as you ought. You begin to be flurried and
frightened; and as soon as presence of mind is
gone, danger is imminent. But, being aware of
the effects of refracted light, you are not alarmed,
and all goes well. Now, a person who can
swim, but who cannot dive, is only an incomplete
swimmer. How often has a thing, or a
body, to be fetched up from the bottom! Diving
is the very best practice for making one's self
really at home in the water. If you open your
eyes while diving, remember to close them just
before reaching the surface, in order to prevent
the eyelashes from being drawn between the
eye and the lid.

For similar reasons, it is better to learn to
swim in an open stream than in a swimming-
bath. On the same account, salt water is less
to be recommended than fresh; for if you can
swim well in the latter, you can swim well in
any other. Whereas, swimmers who have
learned to swim in the sea, are startled to find
themselves sink so low in a lake or river,
and the surprise may easily have fatal
consequences.

Saline waters are not equally buoyant. That
of the Dead Sea is particularly so, from holding
a large quantity of salts in solution. Travellers
describe the ease with which they float on it as
something almost ludicrous. See Kinglake's
Eöthen. The Mediterranean, less buoyant than
the Dead Sea, is more so than the Atlantic;
on certain rocky coasts it is beautifully clear
and transparent, allowing you to see the coral
growing, and the crawfish crawling forward or
darting backward at considerable depths. Your
boat seems to be hovering between two
atmospheres. The Mediterranean is a saline tonic,
blue and bitter. It loses by evaporation, three
times more water than its rivers pour into it.
But for the under-currents in the Straits of
Gibraltar, it would soon become a sea of brine,
and eventually a plain of salt.

The Baltic is fresher than the ocean, and
consequently exerts less floating power. High
up, in the Gulf of Finland, it is fresh enough to
serve for drinking, and may be regarded by
swimmers as river water. As to mineral waters
and saline pools, they vary, from the hot spring
at Dax (south of France), which is simply without
any decided taste, but "not agreeable to
drink," and is used by the inhabitants for household
purposes, to the salinas of South America,
which are saturated brine. A spring or pond of
mineral oil would be a dangerous place to
attempt to swim in, were such a whim to cross
any bather's brain. As to a bath of mercury,
it would be next to impossible to get covered
by the fluid.

If, when swimming in stagnant water, you
happen to get entangled among weeds, it is of
no use attempting to extricate yourself by main
strength. That would make matters worse.
Stop short at once. First take a full inspiration,
and then disengage your arms without raising
them above the water. Paddling with one
hand, you then with the other remove the weeds
from around your neck, and then, gently and
one by one, those twisted round your legs and
thighs. That done, the best way of getting
out of the mess is to turn round, keeping your
legs together, straight and motionless, and
paddle away with your hands only, swimming
dog-wise.

But, the most deadly foe of swimmers (where
there are no sharks) is cramp. I myself, once
a decent swimmer, rarely venture out of my
depth: being subject to cramp in the legs in
bed, especially after much walking exercise. I
never had cramp in the water, and don't know
what I should do if I had. Varying the position
and attitude in swimming tends to diminish
the chance of cramp. In bed, if you can once
get your heel down and your toes up, cramp in
the calf of the leg is mastered. For instance,
one can conceive a sort of stirrup passing under
the toes; by pulling that, and so getting the
heel down, a slight attack of cramp might be
made to pass. But cramp-threatened subjects
had better keep to shallow waters. It is a
curious affection, whose coming on no known
medical precaution can prevent. It is a result