San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1896-08-18
BATHING IN SALT LAKE.
Floating is Easy, But an Attempt to
Swim Has Comical Results.


From the Utahnian.
1t may seem preposterous to talk
of the finest sea bathing on earth
a thousand miles from the ocean; but
truth is no less truth because it APP
pears absurd. The sea bathing in
Great Salt Lake infinitely surpasses
anything of the kind on either the At
lantic and Pacific coast The water
contains many times more salt and
much more soda, sulphur, magnesia,
chlorine, bromine and potassium than
any ocean water on the globe. 1t is
powerful in medicinal virtues, curing
or benefitting many forms of rheuma-
tism, rheumatic govt, dyspepsia, ner-
vous disorders and cutaneOus diseases
and it acts like magic on the hair of
those unfortunates whose tendencies
are TO baldheadedness. 1t is a prompt
and potent tonic and invigOrant of
body and mind, and then there is no
end of fun in getting acquainted with
its peculiarities.
A first bath in it is always as good
as a circus, the bather being his or
her own amusing trick mule. The
specific gravity is but a trifle less than
that of the Holy Land Dead Sea, the
actual figures with distilled water as
unity being, for the ocean, 1.027;
1.116. The human body will not and
can not sink in it. You can walk out in
it where it is 80 feet deep, and your
body will stick up out of it like a
fishing cork from the shoulders up
wards. You can sit down in it per-
fectly secure where it is fathoms
deep. Men lie on top of it with their
heads and smoke their cigars. Its
buoyancy is INDISPENSABLE and uni
Imaginable. Any one can float upon
it at the first trial; there is nothing to
do but lie down gently upon it-and
float
But swimming is an entirely differ
ent matter.The moment you begin to
paddle your own canoe" lively and
to the lookers-on-mirth-p
exercises enSue. When you stick
your hands under to make a stroke,
your feet decline to stay anywhere
but on top; and when, after an excit-
ing tussle with your refractory pedal
eXtremities, you again get them be-
meath the surface, your hands fly out
with the splash and splutter of half
dozen fiutter wheels. If on account of
your brains being heavier than your
heels, you chance to turn a somersault
and your head goes under, your heels
will pop up like pair of friskydidap-
per ducks. You can not keep more
than one end of yourself under water
at once, but you soon learn how to
wrestle with its novelties, and then it
no so Nfh nd
for" any summer day. The water is
delightful to the skin, every sensation
is eXhilarating, and one can not help
feeling in it like gilded cork adrift
in a. jewel-rimmed bowl of champagne
punch In the sense of luXuries ease
with which it envelopes the bather it
is unrivaled on earth. The only APP
Proclamation to it is in the phosphor-
escent waters of the Mosquito Indian
coast
The water does not freeze until
the thermometric mercury tumbles
down to IS degrees above zero, or IA
degrees below the ordinary freezing
point. 1t is as clear as crystal, with
bottom of snow white sand, and
small objects can be distinctly seen
at depth of twenty feet. There is
not a fish or any other living thing
in all the $500 or 5000 square miles
of beautiful and mysterious waters,
except the yearly increasing swarms
of summer bathers. Not shark or
stingaree to scare the timid swim
mer or fioater, not crab or a craw
fish to nab the toe of the nervous
wader, not minnow or frog, tad
pole or pollywog- nothing that lives
moves, swims, crawls or wriggles. 1t
is the ideal sea bathing place of the
world.