"A Tartar having an hour to rest, prefers a bath to sleep. He enters as if drugged with opium, and leaves it, his senses cleared, and his strength restored as much as if he had slept for several hours. This is not to be attributed to the heat or moisture alone, but to the shampooing, which in such cases is of an extraordinary nature. The Tartar sits down and doubles himself up; the shampooer (and he selects the most powerful man) then springs with his feet on his shoulders, cracking his vertebræ; with all his force and weight he pummels the whole back, and then turning him on his back and face, aided by a second shampooer, tramples on his body and limbs; the Tartar then lays himself down for half an hour; and perhaps, though that is not necessary, sleeps. Well can I recal the hamâm doors which I have entered scarcely able to drag one limb after the other, and from which I have sprung into my saddle again elastic as a sinew and light as a feather." Sir Alexander Burnes, in his "Travels in Bokhara," on the same topic observes:--"You are laid out at full length, rubbed with a hair brush, scrubbed, buffeted, and kicked; but it is all very refreshing." And Anquetil gives the following account of shampooing;--"One of the attendants on the bath extends you upon a bench, sprinkles you with warm water, and presses the whole body in an admirable manner. He cracks the joints of the fingers and of all the extremities. He then places you upon the stomach, pinches you over the kidneys, seizes you by the shoulders, and cracks the spine by agitating all the vertebræ, strikes some powerful blows over the fleshy and muscular parts, then rubs the body with a hair-glove until he perspires, grinds down the thick and hard skin of the feet with pumice-stone, anoints you with soap, and lastly, shaves you and plucks out the superfluous hairs. This process continues for three-quarters of an hour, after which a man scarcely knows himself; he feels like a new being. "You will see a hammal (porter), a man living only on rice, go out of one of those baths where he has been pouring with that perspiration which we think must prostrate and weaken, and take up his load of five hundredweight, placing it unaided on his back.