soaking in this water for a couple of months.

Before we reached the hotel, we turned aside into one of the
bath-houses. We stood inhaling a sickly steam in a large, close
hall, which was wholly occupied by a huge vat, across which low
partitions, with bridges, ran, dividing it into four compartments.
When we entered, we were assailed with yells in many languages, and
howls in the common tongue, as if all the fiends of the pit had
broken loose. We took off our hats in obedience to the demand; but
the clamor did not wholly subside, and was mingled with singing and
horrible laughter. Floating about in each vat, we at first saw
twenty or thirty human heads. The women could be distinguished from
the men by the manner of dressing the hair. Each wore a loose woolen
gown. Each had a little table floating before him or her, which he
or she pushed about at pleasure. One wore a hideous mask; another
kept diving in the opaque pool and coming up to blow, like the
hippopotamus in the Zoological Gardens; some were taking a lunch from
their tables, others playing chess; some sitting on the benches round
the edges, with only heads out of water, as doleful as owls, while
others roamed about, engaged in the game of spattering with their
comrades, and sang and shouted at the top of their voices. The
people in this bath were said to be second class; but they looked as
well and behaved better than those of the first class, whom we saw in
the establishment at our hotel afterward.

It may be a valuable scientific fact, that the water in these vats,
in which people of all sexes, all diseases, and all nations spend so
many hours of the twenty-four, is changed once a day. The
temperature at which the bath is given is ninety-eight. The water is
let in at night, and allowed to cool. At five in the morning, the