(i) Proceeding—quickly or leisurely—down frozen roads or artificial snow-made runs.
(ii) Proceeding—as quickly as possible—down artificial ice-runs.
(iii) Bobsleighing (or bobbing)—as quickly as possible—down roads or artificial runs.
The number of folk who practise the first of these immensely outnumbers those who practise the other two; for everybody in Switzerland in the winter is guilty of the first practice, from the small Swiss native, aged perhaps eight or under, who marches up to school with its books tied on to its luge, and gaily and jauntily returns home seated on it, steering and guiding with its ridiculous little feet, and shouting “Gare” or “Achtung,” according to the canton, up to the skilled racer on the skeleton who carries off the Symonds bowl in the race on the Klosters road at Davos. But all these, different as their performances are, are going on snow-runs. The snow may in places, it is true, where it has thawed and frozen again, intimately resemble ice. But the ice-run is different in kind from any snow-runs.
For ordinary travel, let us say from your hotel down to the rink, where there is no question of racing, but just getting there, the toboggan generally used is the Swiss toboggan or luge. It is a high wooden frame (high, that is, compared to the skeleton) with two runners shod with steel or iron, and you sit on it exactly as is most comfortable—it is never very comfortable—and tie your lunch and skates on to it, and push off. If you want to turn to the right, you put your right heel into the snow, or dab with your hand on the right side; if you want to go to the left, you perform the same operation in a sinister manner. If you want to stop, you put both heels into the snow. If you want to go quicker, you, while still sitting down, walk with both feet simultaneously. This sounds complicated; but it is quite clear the moment you feel you want to go quicker—it is done instinctively. Finally, if you are going fast, and must make a sudden stop,
“ACHTUNG!”
From the Drawing by Fleming Williams
owing to some obstacle in the shape of an old lady or a sleigh immediately in front of you, you turn into any convenient snowbank at the side of the road, and having picked yourself up, look injured, which physically you are not. Or, if there is no convenient snowbank, you fall off to one side or the other, and often observe your malicious luge proceeding calmly on its course without you. In fact, you do anything that occurs to you at the moment, except upset the old lady or charge the sleigh.