Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

254 Track Athletics seconds, and a two-hundred-yard dash of 19! sec– onds done as far back as 1847. Another wonder of those days - that is, the days before track athletics were regularly established in this country, although this runner shone some twenty years later than Seward - was Deerfoot, the Seneca Indian, whose performances on the track here and in England were like Leatherstocking tales come to life. Deerfoot ran as nature made him except for a breech-clout, a pair of moccasins, and a feather in his hair. He seemed practically tire– less, and swung on mile after mile in the same long, light, easy stride. In 1863, in London, he did twelve miles in 62 minutes 2t seconds, and in the exact hour he did eleven miles and nine hundred seventy yards, according to the rec– ords that have come down. Among the pro– fessionals whom Deerfoot met in England was William Lang, who gave him all he wanted, and more. Lang's alleged record of 9.1 if for the two miles, made in I 863, is still accepted, although there is little likelihood that it is genuine, and for many years there was a story that he had run a mile in the preposterous time of 4.02. Various similar tales have come down from those days of haphazard athletics, but when they are examined closely one soon learns generally that the course was short, that a hurricane was blowing behind the runner's back, or that the man was running down