| T. Allom. | F. A. Prior. |
OUTER COOLING-ROOM OF THE BATH, NEAR PSAMATIA KAPOUSI.
A district of Constantinople is called Psamatia, from a miracle of the Greek church. During one of those verbal and frivolous controversies which divided it, a priest was reproved by a young child for some unsound opinion. He replied, he would hold it till convinced by a sensible miracle that it was wrong. The child was immediately seized by an invisible hand, and held suspended in the air over the heterodox priest, till he confessed and recanted his error. This miracle, called in the Greek church ypsomathea, or “the divine elevation,” gave a name to the whole district, where it is firmly believed at this day. It is one of the quarters inhabited by the Armenians, and presents many indications of the wealth and industry of that thriving people.
It contains one of the principal baths of the city, in the luxury of which, Oriental Christians, as well as Moslems, indulge. After the process we have already described is gone through, the bather, purged from all corporeal impurities, and escaped from the sensations of suffocation and dislocation, is led by the tellah to enjoy the luxury he has, in the opinion of many, dearly earned. Here, in an apartment reduced to a moderate temperature, reclined at ease on a divan, his purified person slightly covered with shawls, entirely divested of his clothes, and perfectly free from all pressure or restraint, he feels a renovated existence. Refreshments of various kinds are brought to him, and, after taking them, he lies for some time sunk in that dreamy repose of half-conscious existence, which is the very paradise of an Oriental. When this is past, and the heat of his body is reduced gradually to its usual temperature, so that he apprehends no peril from sudden change, he resumes his clothes, and goes on his way rejoicing.
Nothing can afford a stronger contrast than the cautious effeminacy of a Turk, and the rude hardihood of his neighbour and enemy the Russian, in this particular. Both equally indulge in hot-baths; but the one reduces the temperature of his body afterwards, by careful gradations, even in the midst of summer, and dreads any extreme sensation as mortal; while the other rushes from burning heat, with every pore streaming with perspiration, into the intense cold of frozen snow, in the depth of winter, and thinks the luxury and salubrity of the bath increased by the contrast.
By a return of the Stambol effendi, or Turkish lord-mayor, there were in the city 88,115 houses, 130 of which were public baths, in which most of the inmates of the other houses daily indulged. To accommodate the number, men and women were obliged to have recourse to the same bath, at different hours.