Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/488

470 able to run long distances without appreciable fatigue. Formerly, on market days at Bordeaux, long lines of peasants could be seen arriving on stilts, who, though encumbered with sacks and baskets, had come from villages ten, fifteen, or twenty leagues and farther away. Now, the sight of a man on stilts is almost as great a curiosity in Bordeaux as in Paris. The peasant of the Landes comes to the city in a wagon or by railroad.

Stilts are of common use in the Belgian city of Namur, a town which formerly suffered from the periodical overflows of the Sambre and the Meuse. The streets were at such times converted into streams or ponds, and the inhabitants could communicate with one another only by means of boats or on stilts. This condition has been remedied by suitable public works, but the taste for stilt-races and for the organization of societies of stiltsmen has lasted till the present time.

It is said that the stiltsmen of Namur once procured a valuable privilege for their city. The governor had promised the Archduke Albert to send a band of warriors to meet him who should not be on foot or on horseback. He fulfilled his promise with the assistance of two companies of stiltsmen, who performed their evolutions in the archduke's presence. He was so pleased with the spectacle that he gave a perpetual exemption to the city of Namur from the beer-tax. The gratitude of the people toward their stiltsmen, and the esteem in which sports with stilts are held by the youth of Namur, are easily comprehended.

Travelers have seen stilts in ordinary use by natives of several islands of the ocean, especially in Santa Christina of the Marquesas. Here, as in other places, the usage is in consequence of a climatic peculiarity. During the rainy season the lower parts of the island, the surface of which presents few inequalities, are full of marshes, and stilts have been employed from time immemorial as a means of communication over them. It is worthy of remark that the stilts of savage peoples are vastly more ingenious and elegant than those of the Landais shepherds. Marquesan stilts may be seen at the Ethnographic Museum of the Trocadéro and the Marine Museum in the Louvre adorned with really artistic designs and curious sculptures, mostly made with the aid of fire.

Independently of the considerations of facility of communication which have made the use of stilts necessary in some countries, the thought of mounting sticks of greater or less height, in order to appear larger or to excite the curiosity of spectators, seems to have occurred at all times and in all countries. In numerous masquerades artificial giants may be seen—persons who, having thus mounted stilts, excite the admiration of the people. They are a feature of the Italian masquerades. Gigan and his wife are one of the attractions of the carnivals of Lille and