The Countryman newspaper with an account of Blondin’s tightrope crossing at Niagara Falls, October 6, 1862

Abstract

An issue of The Countryman, October 6, 1862. The Countryman was a secessionist newspaper by J.A. Turner from Turnwold, Putnam County, Georgia. Turner printed the newspaper from his plantation. It mostly contains articles about art and culture rather than politics. This issue contains a first-hand account of Charles Blondin’s stunts when crossing the Niagara River on a tightrope. The account takes up approximately half of the first page and describes how Blondin lay down on the tightrope, balanced on his head, hung with one leg hooked over the rope, cooked an omelette on a sheet-iron stove and lowered it to passengers below on the Maid of the Mist. The writer concludes by giving a physical description of Blondin, noting that “he was rather small, but looked hard, wiry and muscular. His complexion was somewhat cadaverous, his hair, moustache, and goatee nearly white. This, I suppose, was their original color, and age had nothing to do with it, for he appeared to be about thirty years old”.