asting as it has seen, and I fancy the
same may be truly said of hundreds of big hills in other towns.
The sport still holds in one form or another, but it has changed.
Coasting in the streets is rightly forbidden now in many
communities. The chances of meeting dangerous obstructions in
these days of multitudinous automobiles and omnipresent trolley
cars are too great: In the old Ponkapoag days such things were
unknown, and the rarely occasional sleigh or wood-sled was little
to be feared. The drivers who were not coasting themselves knew
the coasters had the right of way and "cleared the lulla" to let
them by.

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,