Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 June 1895 — The Finest Toboggan Slide. [ARTICLE]

The Finest Toboggan Slide.

In Perak, a state in the Straits Settlements, the Malays have one form of amusement which is probably not to be enjoyed anywhere else In the world. There Is a huge granite slope In the course of a mountain river, down which the water trickles about two inches deep, the main stream haying carved out a bed by the side of the bowlder. This rock, the face of which has been rendered as smooth as glass by the constant flow of water during the hundreds of years, the Malays—men, women and child ren—have turned into a toboggan slide. Climbing to the top of the rock, they sit in the shallow water with their feet straight out, and a hand on each side for steering, and then slide straight down the sixty feet Into a pool of water. This Is a favorite sport on sunny mornings, as many as two hundred folk being engaged at a time, and sliding down so quickly one after another, or forming rows of two, four, and even eight persons, that they tumble Into a pool a confused mass of scrambling creatures. There is little danger in the game, and though some choose to sit on a piece of plantain most of the tobogganers are content to squat on their haunches.