The ocean / By P. H. Gosse.

  • Gosse, Philip Henry, 1810-1888.
Date:
[pref. 1845]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The ocean / By P. H. Gosse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    a sort of stage, where the rocks are abrupt, in such a manner that it shall proj ect far over the water: then they chase one another along the board, each in turn leaping from the end into the sea. They are also fond of diving from the yard-arms or bowsprit of a ship. But the most favourite pastime of all, and one in which all classes and ages, and both sexes, engage with peculiar delight, is swimming in the surf. Mr. Ellis has seen some of the highest chiefs, between fifty and sixty years of age, large and cor- pulent men, engage in this game with as much interest as children. A board about six feet long, and a foot wide, slightly thinner at the edges than at the middle, is prepared for this amusement, stain- ed and polished, and preserved with great care by being constantly oiled, and hung up in their dwel- lings. With this in his hand, which he calls the wave-sliding board, each native repairs to the reef, particularly when the sea is running high, and the surf is dashing in with more than ordinary violence, as on such occasions the pleasure is the greater. They choose a place where the rocks are twenty or thirty feet under water, and shelve for a quarter of a mile or more out to sea. The waves break at this distance, and the whole space between it and the shore is one mass of boiling foam. Each person now swims, pushing his board before him, out to sea, diving under the waves as they curl and break, until he is arrived outside the rocks. He now lays himself flat on his breast along his board, and waits the approach of a huge billow; when it comes, he adroitly balances himself on its sum-