An old historian of sport quaintly expressed a correct theory as to the
virtue of profuse perspiration: "And when the hunters do their office
on horseback and on foot, they sweat often; then if they have any evil in
them it must come away in the sweating; so that he keep from cold after
the heat." So does the wise man in the tropics regard perspiration--not as
an offensive, certainly not as a pleasant function, but as one that is
really inevitable and conducive to cleanliness and health.

Can the man who swathes his body in ever so many separate, superimposed,
artificial skins, and who is careful to banish purifying air from contact
with him, save on the rare occasions of the bath, be as healthful as he
who furnishes himself with but a single superfluous skin, and that as
thin and penetrable as the laws which hold society together permit?

The play of the sterilising sun on the brown, moist skin is not only
tolerable but delightful--refreshing and purifying the body, while even
light cotton clothing saturated to the dripping stage with perspiration
represents the acme of discomfort, and if unchanged a good deal of the
actually unwholesome.

All the hotter hours of the day have I worked in the bush felling trees,
sawing and splitting logs, and adzing rough timber, the while November's
unclouded sun evaporated perspiration almost as speedily as it flowed
from high-pressure pores. There was no sensation of overheat, although
the arms might weary with the swinging of the heavy maul and the back
respond with aches to the stiffened attitude imposed by the adze.

Then at sundown to plunge into the tepid sea, to frolic and splash
therein, while the red light in the west began to pale and the pink and