There came nights like that of the Christmas just passed when the still, dry air intoxicated the coasters and carried their shouts far tinder the golden moon. Then there would be a constant procession of swiftly flying forms from the brow of the hill where Blue Hill loomed clear-cut against the velvet sky behind, to George B.'s blacksmith shop, at least. Certain flyers were fabled to go farther and, on perfect sledding, to make the gentle declivity clear to Potash Meadow and brook. Such as did this were famous the region through.
It is probable that the coasting on Ponkapoag Hill began with the coming of white settlers to the region, "the Dorchester Back Woods." The Indian invented the toboggan, but he seems to have used it for a sled of burden and not as a pleasure chariot. Coasting is essentially a white man's joy. No white man could have a toboggan at the top of a snow-clad hill and not immediately use it to coast down on. It is in the blood. Tradition has it that the legions of Caesar came over the Alps, and finding the snowy slopes in front of them, immediately sat down on their shields and slid down upon the Northern races they had come to conquer. Many a New England youngster in days gone-by learned to come down a hill on a barrel stave in much the same way; he, too, with blood of the conqueror in his veins. The toboggan wasn't really invented; it grew. From that invention has worked out many devices specially fitted to the sport under special conditions. Switzerland has seen coasting come up from the utilitarian exuberance of the Roman legions to a sport which is international and which draws coasting experts from all over the world. They call it tobogganing, which, of course, it is not and in modern days at least never was, for it is all done on a sled with runners. "Schlittli" the Swiss call it, and though it seems a far cry it may be that our word sled has been developed from it. At least both begin with S.
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Elaborate books have been written about "tobogganing" as it has developed at Davos and St. Moritz, in the Alps. The Swiss Schlittli seems to be much like what the Yankee boys call a "girl's sled," a board seat set high on skeleton runners, that I fancy were at first of the plain wood but later came to be shod with flat iron. On this the coaster sits and goes down the hill sedately, feet foremost. Thus the early Swiss tobogganing was done, the rider steering by putting out a foot to the right or left, after the fashion of the small girl today on her similar sled. Such coasting is done by careful elderly people in St. Moritz or Davos today, only they use wooden pegs held in either hand to steer by. The courses on which they coast are short and straight, modest little coasts such as befit their condition. Then American sports brought to Switzerland the clipper sled. It easily outdistanced the Schlittli, and for the swift, winding courses on which the races were held became the favorite. The clipper sled was born in America, and millions of boys here have them today. They are swift, sturdy, and well fitted for the sport. Their solid wooden runners were long ago shod with flat steel, but for a generation that has been superseded by spring steel, round runner-shoes that add to the swiftness most materially.
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In 1877 the first of this coasting was done by the English at St. Moritz, and ever since the courses there have been steadily improving, and "toboggans" as well. The final word has become a skeleton frame of steel, the wooden runners being entirely removed from within the shoe and the rider occupying a thin board hung between the upper frames. The under part of the heavy steel runner is grooved so as to grip the ice, and the whole "rocks" after the style of the old-fashioned "rocker" skate. Thus on a curve the rider, putting his weight aft is able to turn more rapidly without the sled losing its grip on the ice beneath. On these the Swiss coasters negotiate S curves at surprising speed, and are estimated to reach sixty or even seventy miles an hour on the straight stretches of the world-famous course. As might be supposed by any one who coasts, this speed is not made with the rider sitting on his sled girl fashion. Long ago the American visitors taught the St. Moritz coasters that the way to ride a clipper sled on a swift coast was to go "belly-bump," prone on one's belly, with a foot ready to steer at the right or left as the case might be. The stability is surer because the centre of gravity is lower, the wind resistance is less, and the method is safer and better, if it is not so dignified. The records made thus converted the most phlegmatic Englishmen at St. Moritz, and since then this has been the approved fashion.
But we have gone coasting a long way from Ponkapoag Hill. There, long before the Swiss course was thought of the evolution in sleds was going on, and though Ponkapoag did not evolve the steel-frame skeleton coaster it got some tasty rigs of its own. Similar things were brought out all over New England, I fancy, on all big hills where Yankee boys coasted. One of these was the double-runner, or double-ripper as it was sometimes called, rather ominously. I meet double-runners on the hills sometimes now-a-days, but not the leviathans of old. The beginning of this community coaster is simple. It is two clipper sleds fastened together so that the rear one runs in the tracks of the front one. Then came a board placed lengthwise across the two and the double-runner was fairly begun. Later this board came to be a long plank that would hold a dozen. With that the capacity of the common clipper sled was reached. But they did not stop at that at Ponkapoag. They built two big sleds specially, shod them with proper steel runners at the local blacksmith shop, and set high above them an enormous, stout plank with foot rests and all sorts of modern conveniences.
The men who told of this enormous rig, a "double-ripper" in very truth, are dead and I can't prove it by them, so I hesitate to state the length of this mammoth coasting device and the number of people it would carry lest aspersions be cast on their veracity-and mine-but it was very long and would carry a surprisingly large number. All Ponkapoag was wont to come out of moonlight nights and ride upon it, and its fame carried that of the little village very far. To have coasted on the big Ponkapoag double-runner was as much a thing to be mentioned boastfully in certain sections as it was in others to have been presented at court.
Bob-sled is a proper, dictionary name for the ordinary form of this device and it is used at Davos and St. Moritz for jolly family parties on the straight courses. There they equip it with a bugle to herald its approach with joyous tootings, a bridle of steel wire by which it is steered in combination with pressure on a lever by means of the feet of the steersman, and also with a curious brake which consists of a nail studded board so rigged to the rear sled that the last man can drop it down to the ice and anchor it by the grip of the nails, thereby retarding its speed. The steersman on the mammoth Ponkapoag bob-sled steered by a rope bridle and the use of his feet on a stout wooden cross-bar, and his position was no sinecure. He had at least a ton of people on board and he had no brake.
After the leviathan slid over the brow of the hill and began its downward course there could be no slowing up, no backward sled tracks, till the end of the course was reached. He must negotiate the curve at Captain Bill Tucker's corner at lightning speed and must rightly manage the mass in mighty momentum after that, if he would not spill them all in Ponkapoag brook. The big Ponkapoag bob-sled needed no bugle to herald its coming. When it started off and especially when it swung the curve at Captain Bill's the mingled melody of delight and dismay, masculine and feminine, could easily be heard a mile, and throughout the course the chant of the coasters carried runic warning well ahead of the approaching thunderbolt. In the legend of it all I find no mention of anyone being hurt.