Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/306

Rh "Look around," cried Father Costello, pointing to the perfect circle of bold mountains, that were blue even in the moonlight; "those hills are a perfect coronet. This, too, is the City of the Violet Crown!"

Now for our discovery: we give it to Athens with only one condition,—that henceforth the citizen who shall call his town Aythens shall be disfranchised or excluded from good society, or both.

Half-way down between the island and the shore we plunged into the swift current, intending to float after the canoes, holding on by the painter,—a most enjoyable and interesting thing to do. When you lie at utter rest in the water and watch the shore go by, it seems too delicious for waking life; but this is not the best. Let your whole body and head sink well under the surface, keeping your eyes open; the river becomes an aquarium,—you see the weeds, the stones, and the fishes as clearly almost as if they were in the air. This is because you have no motion except the motion of the water itself; your eyes are fixed in a crystalline medium, and nothing can express the sense of ease, of utter luxury, which the supporting fluid gives to every limb. You are lolling on or in an air-cushion without surface or friction. The mere swimmer