DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.70267#0068
52 EXTREME HEAT AND COLD.
birch trees. In ten minutes they become as red as raw
flesh, and have altogether a very frightful appearance.
In the winter season they will frequently go out of the
bath, naked as they are, to roll themselves in the snow;
and will sometimes come out, still naked and converse
together, or with any one near them in the open air. If
travellers happen to pass by, whilst the peasants of any
hamlet, or little village, are in the bath, and their assist-
ance is needed, they will leave the bath, and assist in
yoking or unyoking, and fetching provender for the hor-
ses, or any thing, without any sort of covering whatever,
while the passenger sits shivering with cold, though
wrapped up in a good sound wolf’s skin. There is noth-
ing more wonderful than the extremities which man is
capable of enduring through the power of habit.
TheFinnish peasants pass thus instantaneously from an
atmosphere of seventy degrees of heat, to one of thirty
degrees cold, a transition of one hundred degrees, which
is the same thing as going out of boiling into freezing
water; and what is more astonishing, without the least
inconvenience 1
Those peasants assure you, that without the hot vapour
baths they could not sustain, as they do, during the
whole day, their various labours. By the bath they tell
you that their spirits are refreshed as much as by sleep.
The heat of the vapour molifies to such a degree their
skin, that the men easily shave themselves with wretched
razors, and without soap.
A Forest wider Ground:
he remains of vrhich are said to have been discover-
ed in the course of the digging of the New Pocks in the
Isle of Dogs, having excited the attention of the- curious,
supposed by some to be the greatest natural curiosity in
this
birch trees. In ten minutes they become as red as raw
flesh, and have altogether a very frightful appearance.
In the winter season they will frequently go out of the
bath, naked as they are, to roll themselves in the snow;
and will sometimes come out, still naked and converse
together, or with any one near them in the open air. If
travellers happen to pass by, whilst the peasants of any
hamlet, or little village, are in the bath, and their assist-
ance is needed, they will leave the bath, and assist in
yoking or unyoking, and fetching provender for the hor-
ses, or any thing, without any sort of covering whatever,
while the passenger sits shivering with cold, though
wrapped up in a good sound wolf’s skin. There is noth-
ing more wonderful than the extremities which man is
capable of enduring through the power of habit.
TheFinnish peasants pass thus instantaneously from an
atmosphere of seventy degrees of heat, to one of thirty
degrees cold, a transition of one hundred degrees, which
is the same thing as going out of boiling into freezing
water; and what is more astonishing, without the least
inconvenience 1
Those peasants assure you, that without the hot vapour
baths they could not sustain, as they do, during the
whole day, their various labours. By the bath they tell
you that their spirits are refreshed as much as by sleep.
The heat of the vapour molifies to such a degree their
skin, that the men easily shave themselves with wretched
razors, and without soap.
A Forest wider Ground:
he remains of vrhich are said to have been discover-
ed in the course of the digging of the New Pocks in the
Isle of Dogs, having excited the attention of the- curious,
supposed by some to be the greatest natural curiosity in
this