courage, strength,
and--it seems to me--skill, sitting on that diminutive sled in
front of the great on-rushing mass and guiding it in safety to the
bottom of the hill, time after time.

*****

That a boy should have been found that would turn this trick after
he had once successfully done it is not so difficult to believe as
that one should have the hardihood to undertake it for the first
time to find out whether he could do it or not. This Yankee
Casabianca, or whatever he ought to be called, I myself knew after
he had reached years of middle life and I dare say discretion. I
remember well his breadth of back and depth of chest, and I think
it quite true that he once lifted a barrel of flour in his teeth,
but whether he got his start in physical strength steering that
Ponkapoag-invented double-runner down the long hill, or whether he
had to have the strength inborn in the first place to be able to
do it, I cannot say.

They have a wonderful curve over at St. Moritz known as the
"Cresta Run," 1320 yards long and abounding in hair-raising
thrills from start to finish. Hardly has the rider, lying prone on
his steel-skeleton flyer, got under good headway before he comes
to the "church leap." Here a swinging descent shoots him into a
double compound curve where he must flash to the left and again to
the right in letter S fashion, helped to be sure, by raised banks
on either side as he needs them. The banks help, but it takes
lightning combinations of wisdom, skill and strength to make the
turns in safety for all that, nor does he have a chance for a long
breath before he shoots at ever increasing speed into the
"battledore" where the course turns almost at a right angle and
shoots him on into the "shuttlecock" where he must negotiate
another right angle. Then he must immediately take "stream corner"
and be ready for his plunge into "the straight." From this again
he has to take "Bulpett's corner." By this time he may be going
seventy miles an hour, but "cresta leap" is before him, after
which he has only to go up the steep hill which is supposed to
arrest his speed at the finish. Yet even here his skill must be in
full play, as riders have been known to go forty feet in air over
the crest of the hill and take a fine plunge into the soft snow
beyond. Indeed, the soft snow waits the venturesome rider at every
turn of the famous St. Moritz course, and many there be who go to
it before "church leap" is fairly negotiated