easy to overcome. It is often almost impossible to find a trustworthy coach. There is nearly always some one in residence who is considered capable of looking after the college Eight, but the ignorance of college coaches is often only too manifest from the arrant nonsense they may be heard shouting on the bank. There is only one remedy I can suggest. Let the college captain secure some member of the University Crew, or any one else who knows what he is talking about, to take the crew for a couple of days, and make the College coach accompany him. He will thus learn something of the rowing of the crew, and you will hear him the next day pointing out the real faults to which his attention has thus been called.
In conclusion, I must add that, keen though the rivalry between the various colleges always is, it is a rivalry which, by the encouragement it gives to rowing, confers good and good only upon the interests of the O.U.B.C., and never degenerates into a jealousy which might be prejudicial to the success of the University as a whole. The college captains elect as president of the O.U.B.C. the man whom they consider to be best fitted for the post, to whatever college he
may belong, for they know that the president will select his crew absolutely impartially, will never think of unjustly preferring men who belong to his own college, but will always do his best to serve the interests of the University.[13]
[13] For further details of college rowing at Oxford and Cambridge, the reader is referred to the extracts from the rules and regulations of the two University Boat Clubs printed in the appendix to this book.
CHAPTER XIII.
COLLEGE ROWING AT CAMBRIDGE.
The casual visitor would scarcely imagine that Cambridge resembled either Macedon or Monmouth in the possession of a river. He sees in The Backs what looks rather like a huge moat, designed to keep marauders from the sacred college courts, and filled with discoloured water, destitute seemingly of all stream. This he knows cannot be the racing river. The innumerable bridges forbid the notion, although Ouida has, in one of her novels, sprinkled it with a mixture of racing Eights and water-lilies. He wanders on from college to college, and nowhere does he come across the slightest sign of the river of which he has heard so much. Indeed, a man may stroll on Midsummer Common within about a hundred yards of the boat-houses without suspecting the existence of the Cam. I can well remember