Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/62

 can scarcely sit down in them, and Aowing spontaneously from a natural spring. The Turks say that, being thus naturally warm without the use of artificial means, they are extremely salubrious. Care is taken to keep them clean, and every one who uses them has all requisite attendance and comfort for a moderate sum of money. In front of the bath is a large saloon, with a broad bench all round it, where the bathers undress and leave their clothes. In the middle of this saloon stand several broadish marble cisterns, out of which you go into the bathhouse. This is much more like a circular chapel than a bath, being ornamented outside with sheet-lead and variegated marble, and paved and inlaid inside, both walls and floor. Internally the bath is like a tub, forty-three paces in circumference, and the water in it is deep enough to reach the chin of a middle-sized man. If any one does not wish to stand so deep in the water, there are two marble benches in the bath at his service, one higher than the other; thus you can sit on the one with the water up to your armpits, on the second with it up to your waist, and on the third, which is the rim, with it up to your knees. If you wish to swim and amuse yourself, there is ample space for the purpose. There are also nine circular side-rooms with two marble cisterns in each. By the wall are tin taps or cocks by which you can let hot or cold water into the cisterns. There is also provision for letting the water out again. In a word, we saw many such amusing and agreeable baths in Turkey and enjoyed the use of them.

There are, moreover, at the side of this bathhouse two other small bathhouses, also of a circular form, in which