758 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



like felt socks), and sleep wherever they find a shade-tree or an open 

 barn. Their portable commissariat consists of biscuits and brown 

 sugar ; with fresh milk and such entremets as the mountain inns may- 

 afford, they make out two good meals a day, besides occasional lunch- 

 eons of nuts and huckleberries. Twenty-two of the twenty-four 

 hours are thus spent in the open air, but the long summer days are 

 almost too short for all the entertainments on the liberal professor's 

 programme. Zoology, botany, and geology are only collateral pur- 

 suits, the main thing is the uproarious fun in the mountains ; climbing 

 cliffs, tumbling bowlders from projecting rocks, and chasing squirrels 

 from tree to tree do not endanger the toilet of the excursionists, for 

 every one of them wears tmmer-clrell, a sort of coarse linen, as tough, 

 though not quite as soft, as corduroy. 



Observant managers of such expeditions soon get rid of the dis- 

 mal prejudices against cold spring-water, " wet feet," and " untimely 

 baths." The craving of a thirsty wanderer after cold water is not an 

 abnormal appetency, but a natural instinct, and can be indulged with 

 perfect impunity ; a bath in sxm-warmed river- water is healthy as long 

 as it is enjoyable ; South-Sea Islanders and the children of the Geno- 

 ese fishermen spend whole afternoons in the surf, and barring sharks 

 and medusas without fear of dangerous consequences. There is no 

 harm in wet stockings as long as the feet are in motion ; at home it is 

 perhaps better to change them at once, though the Canadian lumber- 

 men dry them on their legs before the camp-fire, or even in bed i. e., 

 under a pair of "Mackinaw blankets," which blankets have often 

 served as overcoats during the day, but in the course of the night are 

 dried by the animal warmth like a pack of wet sheets. Sunstrokes 

 can be obviated by a simple and very inexpensive precaution tem- 

 porary abstinence from animal food. A refrigerating diet (vegetables, 

 fruit, etc.) counteracts the effect of a high atmospheric temperature, 

 but the calorific influence of meat and fat, combined with solar heat 

 and bodily exertion, overcomes the organic power of resistance, the 

 pyretic blood-changes produce congestion of the brain and sometimes 

 instant death. I venture the assertion that in nineteen out of twenty 

 cases of comatose sunstroke it will be found that the victims were 

 persons who had gone to work in the hot sun after a meal of greasy 

 viands. One to two p. m. is the sunstroke-hour. 



Among the permanent benefits which young persons may derive 

 from a pedestrian tour, it is not the least that they will mostly get rid 

 of the night-air superstition. Sweet rest and pleasant dreams he 

 knows not who has never slept under a Mexican live-oak tree on a 

 bundle of fresh-plucked Spanish moss, or in the loft of a Tennessee 

 cotton-gin while the winds of the summer night play in draughts and 

 counter-draughts through four open louvres. The advantages of a 

 hardy education in all such things are quite incalculable ; the word 

 hardiness sums up the chief characteristics that distinguished the 



