Various - Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458

I have been all my life a sort of amphibious animal, having, like many an old Roman, learned to swim long before I had learned to read. The bounding backs of the billows were my only rocking-horse when I was a child, and dearly I loved to ride them when a fresh breeze was blowing. I rarely tired in the water, where I often amused myself for hours together. I grew up with such a liking for the exercise, that I have never been able to forego the opportunity for a swim when it offered; and a daily bath has been for a long course of years as necessary to me as my daily food. The exercise of swimming has been through life my chief pleasure and my only medicine—a never-failing restorative from weakness and weariness, and, what may appear strange to some readers, from the effects of irritation, anxiety, and mortification as well.

This accomplishment, however, once led me into a strange adventure. I was engaged in a rather extensive commercial tour through the central kingdoms of Europe. I had crossed the Hungarian frontier about the middle of the day, after being much annoyed and chafed by a multiplicity of delays and extortions; and at length, hot and wearied, arrived at B– late in the evening. As soon as I caught sight of the Danube in the distance, I resolved that the first thing I would do after getting housed and refreshed by a few hours' sleep, should be to enjoy the luxury of a leisurely swim in that noble river. With this view, passing through the town, I put up at a small but decent gasthof which stood upon a patch of rising ground close upon the margin of the stream; and having first seen to the comfort of my horse, which was well-nigh knocked up with the day's journey, and next attended to my own, I retired to rest at an early hour, without descending to the common room and joining in the beery orgies of the evening. I rose next morning, as was my custom, a full half hour before the sun; and finding no one stirring in the house, proceeded to the stables, the back of which overlooked the water. Here I found a middle-aged tatterdemalion, whose flesh and costume were all of one colour, and that the precise hue of the dungheap from which he had just arisen, and from which one might have imagined him to have been engendered. He was in the act of cleaning out the stable, as well as the task could be accomplished, with his bare feet and a shovel, the blade of which was not much bigger than his hand. With some trouble, and with the aid of a small coin, I contrived to make him understand my purpose; and he led me up stairs to a loft, in which I might undress and deposit my clothes, and pointed to a rude flight of wooden steps, leading from the window to the water's edge, and from which I might plunge in from any height I chose.

In a few minutes, I had left my clothes upon a truss of odorous clover, and plunging in head-foremost from the top of the ladder, I rose to the surface at a few yards' distance from the bank, and struck out vigorously to enjoy my swim. The sensation was deliciously cool and pleasant. Keeping my eyes fixed upon the opposite shore, I made towards it, feeling all the while as light as a cork and as strong as a colt. How long I revelled in the first exquisite sense of enjoyment I have not, nor had I then, any very distinct idea. Turning, however, upon my back, just to vary my position, my head, of course, faced the shore I had left, from which, to my great surprise, the good town I had left had vanished entirely, and I became aware that the rapid current of the river, upon which, in my eagerness for a bath, I had not bestowed a single thought, had already carried me some mile or two in its progress towards the Black Sea. Not being victualled for so long a voyage, I began to look around me, and to curse the headlong haste which had brought me into such a dilemma. I found that I was as nearly as possible in the centre of the stream, and immediately put all my vigour in requisition to regain the shore I had left. This, to my no small dismay, I soon discovered was not to be accomplished, the current setting strong towards the opposite side. I made an experiment of my strength by means of a small chip of wood which floated by: I could judge what prospect I had of regaining the northern bank of the river by the distance at which I could leave the chip behind me, while swimming in a contrary direction; but it was of no use: in a quarter of an hour's hard struggling I had not gained twenty yards, while I had floated more than a mile further down the stream. Nothing remained for it but to make for the shore, towards which I was drifting at any rate, and that must be done as fast as possible; for being now really alarmed, I felt, or fancied that I felt my strength deserting me. Under this impression, I struck out more furiously, and thus fatigued myself the more; and it was with no small difficulty I at last reached the opposite bank, up which I climbed, with sensations almost as forlorn and hopeless as those of the shipwrecked mariner whom the tempest casts ashore.

In fact, I would have given a round sum for the rags of the shipwrecked mariner to cover me. Here I was in the condition of a primeval savage, on a desert spot, without a dwelling in sight, and prevented, by the want of clothing, from seeking out the habitations of men. I ran to the highest ground in the neighbourhood, and that was close to the water's edge, and looked around me in every direction. On the shore which I had left, I could see what appeared the dim outline of buildings at a great distance; but on the side of the river on which I was standing, nothing but a vast tract of low land was visible, which, from its swampy condition, it was plain was overflowed by the river in times of flood. I hallooed for some minutes with all the strength of my lungs; but the only response was the rising of a few moorfowl from the marsh, which wheeled cackling above my head, as though wondering what my business might be, and then settled down again in the reedy pool from whence they had arisen at my cry. I sat down upon a stone, and feeling that I was fast going into a state of distraction, tried to collect my faculties, and to consider what was best to be done, or, indeed, if anything could be done. With the sense of my desperate condition came also a horrible sense of the ludicrous. What would my principals in London think of their continental agent shivering, without a rag on, upon the desolate banks of the Danube? Here was I, a man well known upon 'Change, with four thousand pounds in the three-and-a-half per cents, the idea of which had been a comfort to me for many a long year, ready to forfeit the whole sum in exchange for the raggedest pair of pantaloons that ever dangled from a scarecrow, and ready, too, to go down upon my bare knees to any ministering angel of an old Jew who would propose the bargain. I grinned a despairing laugh at the thought of such an absurd compact, and then groaned aloud as the conviction overcame me, that in my present circumstances it would be a prudent one.

Relapsing into grim and savage silence, I glared gloomily at a sharp jagged stone which lay at my feet, and at length, taking it in my hand, walked mechanically into a stagnant pool, where a group of willow sprigs were growing on a few old stumps barely emerging from the water. I contrived to sever a dozen or two of the twigs by hacking at them with the flint—and, carrying them to dry ground, was soon busy in rehearsing over again the toilet of Adam in Paradise. Tying their ends together, I crossed a couple of them over my shoulders in the manner of a shooting-belt, and from these I managed to suspend a kind of frock of green leaves, which effectually transformed my appearance from that of the rude savage of the wild to the civilised Jack-in-the-Green of May-day in London.