Abstract
HAVING seen something very like, if not quite identical with, the following in the Himalayas, I am anxious to know if it is not a commoner device under similar conditions than is generally supposed everywhere. The story occurs in Gerard Boole's (Doctor of Physick) “Inland's Natural History,” p. 59, and is related on the authority of “one Theophilus Buckworth, a Bishop of Dromore,” in whose presence the feat was performed. His description of it runs as follows. After mentioning that the brook or river “that passeth by that town was greatly risen,” he adds that “A country fellow who was travelling that way haying stayed three days in hope that the water would fall, and seeing that the rain continued, grew impatient, and resolved to pass the brook whatever the danger was, but to do it with the less peril and the more steadiness he took a great heavy stone upon his shoulders, whose weight, giving him some firmness against the violence of the water, he passed the same without harm and came safe to the other side, to the wonderment of many people who had been looking on and given him up for a lost person.”
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CURRAN, W. Strange Method of Crossing a Torrent. Nature 22, 339 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/022339a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/022339a0
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