WALKING HALF WAY TO THE MOON.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3013, 21 February 1881, Page 4

WALKING HALF WAY TO THE MOON.

It is not always the professional pedestrians "who perform the greatest feats of walking, and there are in Sydney letter-carriers who have covered i larger number of miles than can be boasted by the best of our champion walkers. An illustration of the amount of ■walking which may be performed in a single lifetime is afforded by the doings of an old Yorkshireman who died at the ripe ago of 84 years, at Masham, in Yorkshire. James Heap was a schoolmaster, and carried on his calling in a wild and bleak part of the county, ■walking every day a distance of eight miles. He lived at a cotton mill just below the village of Healey, ■which is the western part -of that portion of Yorkshire called Mashamshire. His schoolhouse was four miles distant at Colsterdale, -which is still further ■west, and among the bleak moors and wild hills leading away to "Westmoreland. A. storm of wind and rain is no trifling matter in these parts, and during a snowstorm the snow very often drifts so thickly as to make the roads almost impassable ; but no condition of the weather or the atmosphere could shake James Heap's steadfast purpose, and he never had any ailment or accident ■which kept him from going from his daily round to the school and home again. Many a time had he to wade through snowdrifts to find that his pupils were not able to reach the school, and he was constantly subjected to a drenching rain in the winter months. Yet from? December, 1822, to January, 1867, he never missed a single day, and during 2292 consecutive weeks he ■walked more than 110,000 miles, or nearly five times round the world. Nor was he

altogether idle on Sundays, for during 42 years of this period ho shared with others the teaching of a Sunday School at a place called Summerside, about the same distance from his homo, and in an equally dreary and wild district on the moors with Colsfcerdale ; 17 Sundays in each year during these 42 years did he walk eight miles to teach, which adds an aggregate of 5712 miles to the former sum, so that taking Sundays and week days into the reckoning, he would, if he had continued his work for rather more than another year, have covered a distance equal to half the space between the earth and tho moon. The old man, until a short time previous to his death, enjoyed good health, and possessed the full use of his limbs, which appeared to retain much of their strength to the very last.