“Les gants, articles de grand luxe, et de haute élégance, faits pour recouvrir de blanches mains et des bras dodus, sont imbibés d’un jaune d’œuf largement additionné dudit liquide ambré.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Réclus, p. 72.) By the Eskimo urine is preserved for use in tanning skins,[58] while its employment in the preparation of leather, in both Europe and America, is too well understood to require any reference to authorities. The Kioways of the Great Plains soaked their buffalo hides in urine to make them soft and flexible.[59] Urine is employed by the Tchuktchi of Siberia “in curing or tanning skins.”—(“In the Lena Delta,” Melville, Boston, Mass., 1885, p. 318.) Sauer says that the Yakuts tan deer and elk skins with cow-dung.—(“Expedition to the North parts of Russia,” London, 1802, p. 131.) Dung is used in tanning by the Bongo of the upper Nile region.—(See Schweinfurth, “Heart of Africa,” London, 1878, vol. i. p. 134.) Bernal Diaz, in his enumeration of the articles for sale in the “tianguez” or market-places of Tenochtitlan, uses this expression: “I must also mention human excrements, which were exposed for sale in canoes lying in the canals near this square, which is used for the tanning of leather; for, according to the assurances of the Mexicans, it is impossible to tan well without it.”—(Bernal Diaz, “Conquest of Mexico,” London, 1844, vol. i. p. 236.) The same use of ordure in tanning bear-skins can be found among the nomadic Apaches of Arizona, although, preferentially, they use the ordure of the animal itself. Gómara, who also tabulated the articles sold in the Mexican markets, does not mention ordure in direct terms; his words are more vague: “All these things which I speak of, with many that I do not know, and others about which I keep silent, are sold in this market of the Mexicans.”[60] Urine figures as the mordant for fixing the colors of blankets and other woollen fabrics woven by the Navajoes of New Mexico, by the Moquis of Arizona, by the Zuñis and other Pueblos of the Southwest, by the Araucanians of Chili, by Mexicans, Peruvians, by some of the tribes of Afghanistan, and other nations, by all of whom it is carefully preserved. BLEACHING. “Roman fullers used human urine in their business, and Pliny says it was noticed that they never suffered from gout.”—(Pliny, “Natural History,” lib. xxviii. cap. 3: Bohn). Urine has also been employed as a detergent in cleaning wool.—(Encyclopædia Britannica, article “Bleaching.”) DYEING. Urine is used in dyeing by the people of Ounalashka, according to Langsdorff, “Voyages” (vol. ii. p. 47); also, according to Sarytschew, in “Philip’s Voyages” (vol. vi. p. 72).