Men of Muscle, and the Highland Games of Scotland, etc.

2 ;\lEN OF 1'1USCLE. gathering is the greatest of which there is any record, and has probably never been equalled at any time. The pace in which the games were held was called the stadium, the pn:!si<lent or judge was named the He1lanodic, while the competitors were denominated athletre. Spectators came from all the Grecian colonies in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and during the five days on which the games were held, and the celebration of the festival took place, the territory of Elis was inviolable and its invasion sacrilege. Those who came off victorious ·were termed Olympionices, and were welcomed home to their native towns or villages with th~ greatest rejoicing, being esteemed to have gained for their homes an immortal honour. No part of this great competition had the remotest simili- tude to Scottish Highland games, which, although on a much smaller scale than the meetings among the Greeks, are more roman ic and pleasing to the Scotsman in all climes than a dozen Olympic games, even if they were instituted by Hercules in honour of Jupiter. Throwing a stone may have been practised in other lands than Scotland and Ireland, but tossing the caber and throw– ing the hammer are certainly of home manufacture. In primeval times throwing a stone doubtless formed the means of competition, although no trace of any systematic method such as putting can be found, unless in Ireland, and there the stone or ball i5 benerally thrown in the full sense of the word. Throwing the hammer originated in the use of an ordinary blacksmith's fore hammer, and it is probable that the smiths themselves, or some young Highlanders waiting until their horses were shod, and just to pass the time, took the smith's hammer outside and tried who could throw it farthest. This, or something like it, was the beginning of ham1m r- throwing. At all the Hihhbncl pmes in Scotland an iron head and