Of skating little need be said; in so snowy a climate the rinks must
be intelligently managed; their mismanagement will lead to many days
of vexation and some petty quarrelling, but when all goes well, it is
certainly curious, and perhaps rather unsafe, for the invalid to
skate under a burning sun, and walk back to his hotel in a sweat,
through long tracts of glare and passages of freezing shadow. But
the peculiar outdoor sport of this district is tobogganing. A
Scotchman may remember the low flat board, with the front wheels on a
pivot, which was called a HURLIE; he may remember this contrivance,
laden with boys, as, laboriously started, it ran rattling down the
brae, and was, now successfully, now unsuccessfully, steered round
the corner at the foot; he may remember scented summer evenings
passed in this diversion, and many a grazed skin, bloody cockscomb,
and neglected lesson. The toboggan is to the hurlie what the sled is
to the carriage; it is a hurlie upon runners; and if for a grating
road you substitute a long declivity of beaten snow, you can imagine
the giddy career of the tobogganist. The correct position is to sit;
but the fantastic will sometimes sit hind-foremost, or dare the
descent upon their belly or their back.
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