TRAVELS 
56 ° 
We took leave of our aged companion, and were purfuing our 
journey, when a ftorm and violent fall of rain obliged us to take 
refuge in a houfe upon an eminence on the left fide of the river. 
Here we had an extenfivs profpedt, which prefented to our view 
different diftridts of the country overflowed by the river Tornea. 
This houfe had a bath quite in the tafte of Finland, and we 
a mu fed ourfelves by looking at the men and women who entered 
into the bathing room. The men undreffed themfelves in the 
houfe, and ran naked into the bath, which is at a diRance of fif¬ 
teen or twenty feet from the dwelling-houfe. The women, it is 
true, took off their clothes in the bathing-place itfelf, but they 
threw their petticoats on the outfide, and thus were obliged to 
come out, like fo many Eves, to put them on. They threw their 
clothes out of the room to prevent their becoming wet by the va¬ 
pour of the bath. When they were all in the midft of the bath, 
my curiofity influenced me to run in alfo to fee what w’as going on, 
and to Ration my thermometer in a corner of the bath for the 
purpofe of afeertaining the heat; but it was fo infupportable, that 
being abfolutely unable to breathe, I made my w T ay out as faff as I 
went in, having had fcarcely time to look around me. I twice 
attempted to place my thermometer in the room, but I Was obliged 
to call my Finlandifh interpreter, who was more accuRomed to 
it, and I found that the heat was 05 degrees of Celfius. 
At Kirkomeki we met with what I may call an excellent lodg¬ 
ing, and a very polite landlady, who was not of the fame clafs 
with the pcafantry, but a relation of a merchant in Tornea. In 
a fmall 
