Rowing

“ After dining, and allowing the boat to drift while rearranging my provisions, I took my place, and, getting the proper bearings astern, bent on the oars.
To those who have rowed only clumsy country-boats, with their awkward row-locks and wretched oars, slimy, dirty, and leaking, trailing behind tags and streamers of pond-weed, or who have only experimented with that most uncivilized style of digging up the water called paddling, the real pleasure of rowing is unknown. ”

“ Presently we are invited to have a trip in a rowing boat, “Have a row, sir, nice day for a row.” Numbers at the time are indulging in that pleasant form of enjoyment. A party of eight are seated in a rowing boat waiting to be launched, when a little stripling about seven summers old, bare-legged and brave, seeing their readiness, tries with all his might to give the boat the impetus it needs. Some day, his indomitable will and energy will, we hope, be more amply rewarded. ”

“ The rowers are stalwart fellows whose basalt backs shine in the sun as they bend to the oar; in rowing they walk towards the cabin and pull the heavy oars as they step backwards, and every sweep is accompanied by the burst of a refrain in chorus, a wild response to a line that has been chanted by the leader as they stepped forwards. The passengers sit immoveable in the sun and regard us with a calmness and gravity which are only attainable near the equatorial regions, where things approach an equilibrium. ”

“ Afterwards, as the clear young moon begins to sparkle in the sky, the sail is set once more and the prow pointed for home. And if the wind fails, and some rowing has to be done, the exercise is good for keeping off the chill ”

“ It is demanded of a great rowing figure that he must never give way to uncontrollable enthusiasm, except it be at a bump sapper. All our greatest rowing men have been men of silence, grave, reverend, if slightly blasphemous seigneurs. Even in the face of mundane impertinence or obstruction your rowing man must control his tongue. ”

“ Your back aches, your wrists feel limp as wet strings, and your chest is absolutely bursting, and yet you do not seem to be able to put one good stroke in; the boat slips away from you all the time. So for weeks and months runs your daily experience. But when the rudiments of rowing are mastered at last, when patient attention and hard exercise have made you strong, and taught you when and where to use your strength, then comes the reward. ”

“ But you will observe, that, in riding on horseback, you always have a feeling, that, after all, it is not you that do the work, but the animal, and this prevents the satisfaction from being complete.
Now let us look at the conditions of rowing. I won’t suppose you to be disgracing yourself in one of those miserable tubs, tugging in which is to rowing the true boat what riding a cow is to bestriding an Arab. ”

“ In river-rowing, when the tide or current is with the rower, a learner should in general take the middle of the stream. In rowing with the tide, however, watermen generally cut off the points, in order to keep a straight course. ”

“ A rowboat is a safer craft than a canoe, and rowing is not a difficult feat, but there is a difference between the rowing of a heavy flat-bottomed boat and rowing a light skiff or round-bottomed rowboat. In rowing properly one's body does most of the work and the strain comes more on the muscles of the back than on those of the arms.
In paddling you face the bow of the canoe; in rowing you are turned around and face the stern of your boat. In paddling you reach forward and draw your paddle back; in rowing you lean back and pull your oars forward. ”

“ In the early stages of the transition from paddling to rowing, the oar would naturally be used at an acute angle vertically to the boat’s side. In paddling the upper hand is used to push from you, the lower hand to pull towards you. But in rowing both hands are used to pull towards you. ”

“ For the rowing is excellent and the oar is put directly into the water, because it is trusted solely to the hands, without being fastened to anything. That is a custom that obliges them to have their craft very flat, and to elevate the sides but little, and they are content to leave but one plank out of the water. ”

“ They fix these to their saddles, along with their other baggage, and tie the whole to their horse's tail, sitting upon the whole bundle as a kind of boat or float; and the man who guides the horse is made to swim in a similar manner, sometimes having two oars to assist in rowing, as it were, across the river. ”

“ In rowing, their way is to stand up, reach forward with the 30-pound 16 1/2-foot oar, throw all the weight on it, falling backward into the seat. After half an hour of this exhausting work they must rest 15 to 20 minutes. ”

“ Here are three strong men rowing until the boat trembles under their exertions: while the perspiration runs from them, the distance between boat and bear increases, and we believe for a moment that it will be able to get away by reaching an ice-floe on the other side of the vessel. ”

“ Rowing exercises these muscles condemned to waste, and imparts a natural carriage to the girl's frame. In rowing, as in horseback riding, the clothing should be loose, stays left off, and flannels worn next the skin. The dress itself should be of woolen, and there should always be in the boat a large wrap to use when one stops rowing. ”

“ I must first say, however, that it is not done by rowing with the wings, for they move up and down, not backward and forward, and no amount of rowing up and down would drive a bird forward, any more than rowing backward and forward would lift a boat up into the air. ”

“ Another admirable means of exercise will be found in rowing. Our Island must have a good substantial boat-house, containing a good-sized barge for excursions and several pleasure-boats pulling two or three pair of sculls each ”

“ Some of these are of opinion that paddling should consist of rowing gently, comparatively speaking, with less force and catch at the beginning of the stroke and with less reach than when rowing hard, but with blade always covered to regulation depth. ”

“ Hence we can understand the long series of victories gained by the light-blue oarsmen in the 'old fashioned racing eights'. But when we come to consider the case of a boat like the present wager-boat—a boat which answers immediately to the slightest propelling force—we see that that mode of rowing must be the most effective which permits the oar to have the least possible motion through the water, which lifts the boat along from the water as from an almost stable fulcrum. ”

“ It has got an irregularly-developed tail to balance an irregularly-developed body, as skiffs lean on the one beam and full on the other require, in rowing, a cast of the rudder to keep them straight in their course. ”

“ When one exchanged the rowing-seat for a place in the bottom of the boat, he suffered a bodily depression that caused him to be careless of everything save an obligation to wiggle one finger. There was cold sea-water swashing to and fro in the boat, and he lay in it. His head, pillowed on a thwart, was within an inch of the swirl of a wave crest, and sometimes a particularly obstreperous sea came in-board and drenched him once more. But these matters did not annoy him. ”

“ I have been out again on the river, rowing. I find nothing new. ”

“ In his river studies he found the river rats of irreplacable value as advisers, for they showed him the niceties of river features, the white streak of a fisherman's new jump line on a snag, the oar pinheads of shanty boats, the service of a long handy line in throwing Young's big storeboat out of the main current into an eddy, the old-fashioned stern oar, the pretty work of a tripper who used an outboard motor to drive his shanty boat from the dead water of an eddy out into the running channel. ”

“ A lot of foolishness—a mere waste of time. It was bad enough with baseball and football, but now that rowing has started, it is worse than ever. I wish those old graduates had never made their gift!”
“Tut! Tut! My dear Professor!” remonstrated Dr. Churchill. “Rowing is a form of exercise that develops muscles never brought to the owner’s attention in any other way. I have been reading up on the subject since the eleven has taken to the shell, and I find that the ancient Romans, in their galleys, had rowing down to a perfection rarely attained to-day. ”

“ In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die. ”

“ A good and experienced waterman, however, ought certainly to be able to keep his oar on the feather against a high wind until the last available moment. The movement of returning the blade to the square position ought to be firm and clean. ”

“ This bird, the Great Northern Diver, well deserves its name; for when pursued with a boat, it will dive, and swim like a fish under water, for sixty rods or more, as fast as a boat can be paddled, and its pursuer, if he would discover his game again, must put his ear to the surface to hear where it comes up. When it comes to the surface, it throws the water off with one shake of its wings, and calmly swims about until again disturbed. ”

“ The men, who have all rested a few minutes, are ordered to take their stations, and lay hold of their oars, for the river must be crossed, it being seldom possible to double such a point and proceed along the same shore. The boat is crossing, its head slanting to the current, which is however too strong for the rowers, and when the other side of the river has been reached, it has drifted perhaps a quarter of a mile. The men are by this time exhausted, and, as we shall suppose it to be twelve o'clock, fasten the boat to the shore or to a tree. ”

“ Still are the slim, gray masts of fishing boats dry on the flats.
Ah, how well I remember those wide red flats, above tide-mark
Pale with scurf of the salt, seamed and baked in the sun!
Well I remember the piles of blocks and ropes, and the net-reels
Wound with the beaded nets, dripping and dark from the sea!
Now at this season the nets are unwound; they hang from the rafters
Over the fresh-stowed hay in upland barns, and the wind
Blows all day through the chinks, with the streaks of sunlight,
and sways them
Softly at will, or they lie heaped in the gloom of a loft. ”

“ How still the woods seem from here, yet how lively a stir the hidden animals are making; digging, gnawing, biting, eyes shining, at work and play, getting food, rearing young, roving through the underbrush, climbing the rocks, wading solitary marshes, tracing the banks of the lakes and streams! Insect swarms are dancing in the sunbeams, burrowing in the ground, diving, swimming,—a cloud of witnesses telling Nature’s joy. ”

“ The lone steersman of the descending boat observes the nocturnal hunter, gliding on extended pinions across the river, sailing over one hill and then another, or suddenly sweeping downwards, and again rising in the air like a moving shadow, now distinctly seen, and again mingling with the sombre shades of the surrounding woods, fading into obscurity. ”

“ The river—with the sunlight flashing from its dancing wavelets, gilding gold the grey-green beech-trunks, glinting through the dark, cool wood paths, chasing shadows o’er the shallows, flinging diamonds from the mill-wheels, throwing kisses to the lilies, wantoning with the weirs’ white waters, silvering moss-grown walls and bridges, brightening every tiny townlet, making sweet each lane and meadow, lying tangled in the rushes, peeping, laughing, from each inlet, gleaming gay on many a far sail, making soft the air with glory—is a golden fairy stream. ”

“ Observe to Angle with the Artificial Fly in Rivers disturbed somewhat by Rain, or in a Cloudy day, the 102 Wind blowing gently: If the Wind be not so high, but you may well guide your Tackle, in plain Deeps is to be found the best Fish, and best Sport: If small Wind breeze, in swift streams is best Angling: Be sure to keep your Fly in perpetual slow motion; and observe that the Weather suit the Colour of your Fly, as the light Colour’d in a Clear day, the Darkish in a dark, &c. As likewise according to the Waters Complexions, have your Fly suitable. ”

“ Like crest of cruelly spurred horse, the waves toss high, the mad gusts catch the rising gouts, wrench them clear into the air and hustle them along to crash in resounding sheets far up the shore. No boat was, we recollect with pleasure, visible before the squall descended: it would go hard with such a one just now. ”

“ Another day as you troll along the channel an oar's length from the weedy borders, you see him afloat on his lily-pad raft, heeding you no more than does the golden-hearted blossom whose orange odor drifts about him, nor is he disturbed by splash of oar nor dip of paddle, nor even when his bark and her perfume-freighted consort are tossed on your undulating wake. ”

“ In diving, its little wings are used as fins; but on the land, as front legs. When crawling, it may be said on four legs, through the tussucks or on the side of a grassy cliff, it moves so very quickly that it might easily be mistaken for a quadruped. When at sea and fishing, it comes to the surface for the purpose of breathing with such a spring, and dives again so instantaneously, that I defy any one at first sight to be sure that it was not a fish leaping for sport. ”

“ Then down the coast, tacking close to shore, slowly swam a little sloop, white-winged like some snowy sea fowl. Its course lay within twenty points of the wind’s eye; so it veered in and out again in long, slow strokes like the movements of a graceful skater. ”

“ The rower sits on a thin board and rows continuously, but faces forwards, for he must be able to see the waterway downstream. The blades of the oars are divided like a fork, and a piece of leather is sewed between the prongs like the web of a duck’s foot. Our boatman is a self-confident fellow, and receives my advice with a smile of superiority when I venture to air my experience in river navigation. The current does most of the work, but the oars are in constant use to keep the boat under control. ”