Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/336

324 or else travel north till they come to fireplaces, stoves, ovens, or other means for artificial warmth. Inquiry into the sanitation not only of residences but of the towns should never be neglected. I suppose the climate of the southern and southeastern coast of Spain is perhaps the most genial on the Mediterranean, and equally the most dangerous for Americans to abide in on account of the lack of proper drainage and other attention to sanitation. But the same may be said of much of the coast except on portions of the Riviera, where in certain places much improvement has been and is being effected in that respect.

There are generally good reasons for many of the customs and habits of the natives of any region, and there will be found advantages in adopting many of their ideas and methods so far as practicable. Along the Riviera people flock indoors with the going down of the sun: and there is good reason for it. At Nice, I have seen the thermometer register a fall of 25º F. within an hour as the sun neared the horizon. Such sudden cooling might be dangerous to an American dyspeptic with his limited power of reaction. Going indoors reduces this difference of temperature. Right across the Gulf of Lyons, in Barcelona, Spain, in nearly the same latitude and about the same mean temperature, the habit of the people is to be out of doors in the evening, promenading, visiting theaters and cafés, and the ladies doing their shopping till midnight and after. They find evening the best time for many purposes because there is very little change between the temperatures day and night. My thermometer was hung in an alley which the sun never reached, and all I could make it do was to record the extreme difference of two degrees between six o'clock in the morning and two o'clock in the afternoon during a week. I was still a thermometer dupe at that time. I have since broken my thermometers, and they will never endanger my sanity any more.

But it is not always convenient or even possible for one needing the therapeutic advantages of change of climate to go to Europe, nor is such a change necessary or even desirable in many cases. There is a great deal of as good climate as the world affords in our own country; and almost any change from low to high temperature, from damp to dry, from low to high altitudes, from seashore to mountains, from regions of high cultivation to the balsamic air of primeval forests or the reverse, can be had without the fatigue and expense of long sea voyages and wide stretches of turbulent sea between the traveler and anxious friends at home. The "sunny south" offers much that is admirable both in quality and variety of climate suited to various conditions. The main idea should not be the search for the perfect climate which does nowhere exist, but the question should be, "What