avity is but a trifle less than that of the Holy
Land Dead Sea.

The human body will not and cannot sink in it. You can walk out in it
where it is fifty feet deep, and your body will stick up out of it like
a fishing-cork from the shoulders upward. You can sit down in it
perfectly secure where it is fathoms deep. Men lie on top of it with
their arms under their heads and smoking cigars. Its buoyancy is
indescribable and unimaginable. Any one can float upon it at the first
trial; there is nothing to do but lie down gently upon it and float.

But swimming is an entirely different matter. The moment you begin to
"paddle your own canoe," lively and--to the lookers-on--mirth-provoking
exercises ensue. When you stick your hand under to make a stroke your
feet decline to stay anywhere but on top; and when, after an exciting
tussle with your refractory pedal extremities, you again get them
beneath the surface, your hands fly out with the splash and splutter of
a half-dozen flutter wheels. If, on account of your brains being heavier
than your heels, you chance to turn a somersault, and your head goes
under, your heels will pop up like a pair of frisky, dapper ducks.

You cannot keep more than one end of yourself under water at once, but
you soon learn how to wrestle with its novelties, and then it becomes a
thing of beauty and a joy for any summer day. The water is delightful to
the skin, every sensation is exhilarating, and one cannot help feeling
in it like a gilded cork adrift in a jewel-rimmed bowl of champagne
punch. In the sense of luxurious ease with which it envelops the bather,
it is unrivaled on earth. The only approximation to it is in the
phosphorescent waters of the Mosquito Indian coast.

The water does not freeze until the thermometric mercury tumbles down to
eighteen degrees above zero, or fourteen below the ordinary freezing
point. It is clear as crystal, with a bottom of snow-white sand, and
small objects can be distinctly seen at a depth of twenty feet. There is
not a fish or any other living thing in all the 2,500 to 3,000 square
miles of beautiful and mysterious waters, except the yearly increasing
swarms of summer bathers. Not a shark, or a stingaree, to scare the
timid swimmer or floater; not a minnow, or a frog, a tadpole, or a
pollywog--nothing that lives, moves, swims, crawls or wiggles. It is the
ideal sea-bathing place of the world.

CHAPTER VI.

THE INVASION OF OKLAHOMA.

A History