Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/489

. In various places we may see Gargantuas, Goliaths, or Saint Georges and Saint Michaels. From the acrobatic point of view, walking on stilts gives occasion for feats of agility easy to execute and amusing to the spectator. Acrobats on stilts have been mentioned in Japan, China, India, and Oceania; and clowns are sometimes seen in circuses executing curious exercises on stilts.

The use of stilts is a sport, an amusement for children. Real stilt-races may be seen every day in public gardens. The peasant youth in the country are adepts in making excellent stilts of forked sticks which they cut in the thickets.

I have been told by a friend that the college students at Brive-la-Gaillarde formerly had a peculiar sport of going on holidays on stilts to what they called viper-hunts. They armed themselves



with a long rod split at the end, and went on stilts, of course, as a precaution against being bitten. When, in the evening, they passed through the city, still on stilts, each carrying at the end of his rod an adder or two which they called asps or black vipers, they excited a sensation. Women and children ran away from them or fled into the houses to get away from their tricks.

It seems to be a great pleasure to men on stilts to try to throw one another down. Every young stiltsman is ready to attack, to push, or to trip his colleagues. In the public gardens of Paris, in the Luxembourg, for example, where many youth amuse themselves with stilts, wrestling and contests became so frequent that once after an accident the authorities were constrained to prohibit them. These games on stilts seem to be attractive also to the children of the Marquesas Islands. Pêre Mathias, in his