sia. We--at least, I--had
read about the competitions at Holmen Kollen, near Christiania, when the
Norsemen have their annual fling for the great "ski-hop." Reading of
this had caused me to have a great ambition to be able to shoot hills
and precipices upon snowshoes as the Norse fellows do, and I persuaded
Billy to be ambitious also, and to practise the things with me near St.
Petersburg, where they use the same kind of snowshoes or _ski_'
(pronounced _shee_).

* * * * *

My cousin Tom, being an expert snowshoe-runner, accompanied us to the
country place where we should find slopes of every grade of difficulty,
in order to show and explain how the thing was done.

'You may fall about a bit,' he said, 'at first, but you will soon learn
to glide down a moderately steep hill-side safely enough. You won't be
qualified to compete at Christiania this year though, Bobby, for it's an
art that requires much practice before perfection is attained. One
cannot do anything well that is worth doing,' added Tom, 'without a lot
of trouble; that is a lesson one is constantly learning through life!'

Well, we found this true enough, for the _ski_-running gave us a lot of
trouble, as Tom had hinted.

The shoes are peculiar-looking things. They are about six or seven feet
in length, some four inches in width, and are made of thin, strong,
seasoned wood, half an inch thick, running to a point in front, the
'toes' turning up, of course, for otherwise they would catch in the
snow. One stands in the middle, inserting the foot in a strap, which
closes round the instep. Then one slides along the surface of the snow
in the best way one can--which, at first, is a very awkward way indeed.

We drove down to a shooting-lodge, near Lavrik, and then, having
lunched, we called for snowshoes and strapped ourselves into them.

'Now then,' said experienced Tom, 'we will just walk off towards the
gully, where there are some nice easy slopes for you to begin upon.'

With these words Tom glided away upon his shoes; it looked the easiest
and most delightful thing in the world. Tom moved forward like a bird
upon the wing, slid a dozen yards away, turned, and came back to us.

'Lovely, isn't it?' he said. 'Come along, just skate forward; keep the
front part of the _ski_ well apart, or the points will cross, and you
will come to a sudden stop.'

Billy made a few awkward slides forward; one of his shoes went
south-east an