"The doctor," he says, "takes three or four large stones, which, after having heated red-hot, he places in the middle of the stove, laying on them some of the inner bark of oak, beaten in a mortar, to keep them from burning; this being done, they (the Indians) creep in, six or eight at a time, or as many as the place will hold, and then close up the mouth of the stove, which is usually made like an oven in some bank near the water-side; in the meanwhile, the doctor, to raise a steam, after they have been stewing a little time, pours cold water on the stones, and now and then sprinkles the men to keep them from fainting; after they have sweat as long as they can well endure it, they sally out, and (though it be in the depth of winter) forthwith plunge themselves over head and ears in cold water, which instantly closes up the pores and preserves them from taking cold." After the bath, they are anointed like the Romans, the pomatum of the Indians being for the most part bear's-grease, containing a powder obtained by grinding the root of the yellow alkanet. But we find this primitive form of bath nearer home than the American Continent--namely, in Ireland, although both the American and the Irish bath may, Mr. Urquhart suggests, have been derived from the same ancestry--that of the Phœnicians. In a foot-note appended to a page on the universality of the bath, in his "Pillars of Hercules,"[3] Mr. Urquhart gives the following very curious and very interesting account of the practice of sweating employed in former times in Ireland, as reported to him by a lady as a recollection of her childhood:-- [3] "The Pillars of Hercules; or, a Narrative of Travels in Spain and Morocco in 1848." By David Urquhart, M.P. 1850. "With respect to the sweating-houses, as they are called, I remember about forty years ago seeing one in the island of Rathlin, and shall try to give you a description of it. It was built of basalt stones, very much in the shape of a bee-hive, with a row of stones inside, for the person to sit on when undergoing the operation. There was a hole at the top, and one near the ground, where the person crept in and seated him or herself, the stones having been heated in the same way as an oven for baking bread is, the hole on the top being covered with a sod while being heated, but I suppose removed to admit the person to breathe. Before entering, the patient was stripped quite naked, and on coming out, dressed again in the open air. The process was reckoned a sovereign cure for rheumatism and all sorts of pains and aches."