14
holding your breath. It is usual at first, for these reasons, to administer sundry helps; as, to be assisted to hold up the chin, or procure a bundle of cork or bladders, which are the best helps for young beginners.
Take special care that the water be not higher than your breast, nor shallower than up to your belly.
FLOATING.
When you are upright in the water, lie down on your back very gently; elevate your breast above the surface of the water; and, in the meantime, keep your body always extended in a right line, your hands stretched to the outside of the thighs, striking out and drawing in your legs successively, and keeping them within two feet of the surface of the water, and govern yourself accordingly. It is true, there will always be a great part of the head under water, which makes most beginners not care for this way; notwithstanding which, it is the most easy and safe method of swimming, and that wherein we may continue longest, for it least tires, and one is not forced to drink so much water as when swimming on the belly: besides, we more easily cut through the waves, and run not so great a risk of being entangled among weeds as on the belly. At the
