Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 January 1894 — WALKING ON STILTS. [ARTICLE]

WALKING ON STILTS.

It Ii a Common Practice In One Province of Franco. The majority of the people in the western portion of the French province of Gascony walk on stilts. That is a district known as the Landes, with a sea liqe bounding the French side of the Bay Iff Biscay and extending at its greatest breadth about sixty miles back into the country. The Landes form one of the wildest and strangest parts of France, and the inhabitants are fully as strange and uncultivated as the black pine forests, the dreary swamps and the far-spreading deserts of fine white sand which they inhabit. Most of them are shepherds, and they elevate themselves on stilts five feet high in order to be above the marshes and the sand blasts. These stilt-walkers present strange and uncouth figures as they progress over the wilderness of country In attendance on their flocks, sometimes at the rate of six or seven miles an hour. They rest by the aid of a third wooden support, pursuing meanwhile their everlasting occupation of knitting. In appearance the Landes shepherd looks like an uncouth mass of dirty wool. On his body he wears a fleece like a rude paletot, his thighs and legs on the outside are protected by greaves of the same material, and his feet are encased in sabots and coarse woolen socks. In some parts of Malaysia the natives walk almost habitually on stilts. Nature and necessity have brought about this result, as excessive inundations of river and sea often submerge the whole surface of the land in many places, rendering ordinary modes of locomotion impossible. In parts of Holland also it is a very ordinary sight to see people walking about upon stilts of various sizes.