INTRODUCTION TO SWIMMING Swimming is the most versal of all physical exercises. As a pastime it has its votaries in every country ; and that skill in the exercise is of perlative importance need not be dwelt upon, seeing that ability to swim may enable a man to save his life or the lives of others. The praises of swimmers were sounded by the great poets in the early days of the world's history, and in many places scattered through the pages left us by antique sages are to be found references to the art. The. Brahmins have always held bathing in high esteem. Sonnerat, in the narrative of his voyages between the years 5774 and x781, describes the great religious bathing festivals common in India, especially mentioning the Sandivane, which the Brahmin priests make alone to the gods in general ; and as the ancient priests of Egypt in like manner purified themselves by bathing in the morning and plunging into the sacred waters of the Nile, he remarks that the ceremony was probably derived by them from the early followers of Brahma.
The Egyptians, as recorded in the Book of Exodus, were in the habit of bathing in the Nile ; and that it was common amongst even the women of the period is evidenced by the fact that the daughter of Pharaoh habitually indulged in the invigorating exercise.
Although no specific mention of the art is made in the records quoted, it can be conclusively proved from other sources that it has long been known and understood, and that its practice, not only as a pastime, but as an effective means of escape from threatened dangers, and also as a method of trans port in crossing streams, dates back to the remotest era. The monuments of the ancients are the best possible proofs of their prowess. In the Nimroud gallery at the British Museum there are some interesting bas-reliefs depicting fugitives swimming for refuge to a fortress, and also the crossing of a river by Assur Nasir Pal, King of Assyria, and his army. The probable date of these monuments, which were discovered by Mr. Layard in the palace of Nimroud, is about 88o B.C. The first slab repre sents a castle, apparently built on an island in the river. One
tower is defended by an armed man ; two others are occupied by females. Three warriors, probably escaping from the enemy, are depicted as swimming across the stream, two of them on inflated skins in the mode practised to this day by the Arabs inhabiting the banks of the rivers of Assyria and Mesopotamia, except that in the bas-relief the swimmers are shown as re taining the aperture, through which the air is forced, in their mouths. The third swimmer, pierced by an arrow discharged from the bow of a warrior kneeling on the shore, is represented as struggling without the support of a skin against the current. A study of these bas-reliefs has led us to infer that the older swimmers were not altogether deficient in the knowledge of the side-stroke, which swimmers seem to imagine is quite a modern development. The Assyrian bas-reliefs picture men swimming in the side-stroke position as well as with the breast stroke on an inflated skin. A drawing made at Pompeii of one of the later mosaics still remaining there gives almost the exact position of the stroke popularised in England by Trudgen, a stroke which was known and practised long before by the Indians and other uncivilised nations. There is an interesting vase painting to be seen in the British Museum on a vessel of the shape known as an oinochoe, or wine jug, of the Archaic period (about 520-500 B.c.), with black figures on a red ground, the subject representing a ship on the prow of which (in the form of a boar's head) a nude male figure stands in an attitude as if about to dive into the sea. He is apparently being pushed off with a stick by a man behind him. The subject has not been nitely explained, but may refer to the landing of tesilaos at Troy. He was the first of the Greeks to land on the shore of Troy, and—that he might be first—is recorded to have leapt out of the ship and swum to land. Another explanation is that the ing illustrates some religious ceremony, such as is scribed in Frazer's Golden Book,' vol. ii. p. 213, ing human victims into the sea to appease marine or other deities.