The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-08-25
SOME MIGHTY SWIMMERS.

SOME MIGHTY SWlMMERS.
 But, however exaggerated and in1- probable some of the ancient tales may be- the existence of powerful swim mers is by no means peculiar to our
 own times. During the siege of Tyre by the Macedonians, the Greeks had their mole destroyed by an army of Tyrian divers, and at the blockade Of Byzantium by Septimus Severus the Romans had many ships stolen by the swimmers of the enemy. Tt was sin- gular," says Dion Cassius, "to see these vessels moving without sails or yards, as it were by enchantment into the ports of Byzantium." Later on, in the fifteenth century, we hear of one Nicholas, the Sicilian, who was sur 1 named, for his prowess, the Fish. We | must disbelieve the assertion that he | could stop out at sea for four or five days at a time, feeding on the fish he caught and seaweed; but there is no | doubt that he dived, at the instigation | of the King of Sicily, from place upon | Cape Faro into Charybdis. At first he | hesitated to perform the feat, until the I king threw a silver cup, in order that | he might recover it. To tempt him | second time a golden cup was thrown, | and the intrepid diver, plunging in af- | ter it, was never heard of again.
 | That savages are, as rule, better l swimmers than civilized men is not to | be wondered at, considering their mode | of life Captain Cook tells us that the 1 South Sea Islanders would venture,
 swimming, where no boat could ever l har tod ,at pf TlpriHq
 were accustomed to swim out far from l land in order to fish, and only returned
 to shore when hunger compelled them. | It was against these same Floridans l that Ferdinand de Soto, a Spanish gen.
 eral, fought so hard campaign. at the 1 time when the country was conquered. l On one occasion some hundred of them were driven into lake, from the mid-
 dle of which they used their bows and
 arrows with considerable effect. The
 lake was surrounded, and it was only
 when the savage had been in the water | twenty-four hours that those who were l left of them surrendered Perhaps the ] most fish-like people of modern times ] are the Syrian sponge-divers. During l the whole of the winter these men are entirely idle sitting at the doors of | their houses, cigarette between the 1 lips. But as soon as summer comes | they entirely change their manner of life. Amout four and half miles from
 shore lie the extensive sponge beds, in ravaging which they will employ them
 selves all day, staying so long beneath | the surface that the blood will pour I from their noses and ears, and even | eyes. They must certainly beat the English record for remaining under | water, which is four minutes twenty
 nine and one-half seconds.
 If any class of men might be excused from taking kindly to the robust exer-
 else of swimming, one would suppose
 that literary men, especially poets,
 would be the first to claim that indul-
 gence. Curiously enough, there have been many literary swimmers. several | of them very good ones Josephus for | instance the historian of the Jewish wars, swan, when shipwrecked in the
 Adriatic, for whole night, till he was
 fortunately picked up by f1shngves-
 sel; the Portuguese poet Camoens was
 famous as swimmer; while, at the present time, our greatest poet enjoys
 the reputation that would not disgrace l o out iilOlC iiohtapiN aiioiS
 swimming poets was Lord Byron, es- pecially on account of his having swum the Hellespont, from Abydos to Sestos,
 very near the place where Leander is I fabled to have crossed it. The distance frcm Abydos to Sestos is thirty stades,
 or three miles six furlongs; but the current runs so strongly that this is
 equivalent to much greater distance.
 Byron failed in his first attempt, get
 ting, as he tells us, in "Don Juan," an
 ague for his reward. An evil destiny,
 in fact, seems to have overhung the
 whole affair, for the fisherman, in
 whose house Byron rested after being
 rowed to shore, was drowned while re-
 turning from Abydos, whither he had
 gone to thank the grateful poet for the | present of gun But Byron's longest swim was from the Isle of Lido up into
 Venice. This he undertook in company
 with friend and an Italian called
 Mengaldo, advocate to the French con-
 sulate at Venice. Byron, as we know,
 was lame, while Mendalgo had had both
 of his legs broken and not properly set.
 In the trial of endurance the two Eng
 lishmen came off best, the Italian giv-
 ing up at the entrance of the Grand Ca
 nal. Byron's friend had had enough of
 it at the Rialto, while the poet himself
 swam right up into Venice, and even
 then was not overtired. He had been
 in the water four hours and twenty
 minutes.
 In talking of long-distance swimming it would be surprising if one did not lcal to mind the famous crossing of- the