Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/335

Rh a small quantity of the water will sometimes do it to the extent here contemplated.

There is some danger to the novice in going into semitropical regions in being unacquainted with and unprepared for the degree of apparent cold which he is likely to find to his great surprise. And when he looks at the thermometer he is further surprised to see it so high while his feelings indicate a much lower temperature. He is still more astonished to notice that the natives do not mind the cold that makes the novice shiver. The fact is that without his accustomed fire and housewarming facilities, and subjected to air currents, the practical temperature in its physiological effects is much lower than the thermometer registers. In Spain, Italy, and in general along the Mediterranean shore, they have a semitropical climate during eight or nine months of the year, during which time the native inhabitants hold their calorifacient function in reserve, and when they reach their short and moderately cold season they have no difficulty in drawing sufficiently on their reserve heat-making power. The man from the north has no such reserve, and what he has the temperature is not sufficiently stimulating to call into full activity. He has used up his caloric in the greater cold of the north. People from the extreme south enjoy their first northern winter. I met, in Teneriffe, an intelligent captain of a whaling ship who had several times fished in the Bering Sea. He said it is customary for whalers to make up for loss of men from desertions by taking on South Sea islanders. He said they bear the cold and hardships of the north as well as New Bedford whalemen, and in proof related the following incident: One morning, when far north, he noticed on coming on deck one of his South Sea islanders entirely naked taking a bath. There was a strong wind blowing, and it was so cold that the water he dashed over him froze as it struck the deck. The man seemed to enjoy it, though he had never seen frozen water or snow before. There are good reasons why people of the north with impaired stamina should not expect to bear exposure so well as natives of semitropical regions and should make themselves, in regard to temperature, more comfortable than would be sufficient for the natives.

Northern people should be particularly careful in going to a climate with a temperature too low for comfort without a fire and too high for comfort with a fire. Even the increased sunshine is not sufficiently constant, and all rooms do not face the south. No matter what natives may say, Americans ought always to have the means for heating when occasion requires, and a southern aspect to their rooms everywhere in southern Europe, if they are at. all sensitive to cold, irrespective of the thermometer,