§ 42. They take great delight in sweating, and therefore in every town they have a sweating house, and a doctor is paid by the public to attend it. They commonly use this to refresh themselves, after they have been fatigued with hunting, travel, or the like, or else when they are troubled with agues, aches, or pains in their limbs. Their method is thus: the doctor takes three or four large stones, which after having heated red hot, he places them in the middle of the stove, laying on them some of the inner bark of oak beaten in a mortar, to keep them from burning. This being done, they creep in six or eight at a time, or as many as the place will hold, and then close up the mouth of the stove, which is usually made like an oven, in some bank near the water side. In the meanwhile the doctor to raise a steam, after they have been stewing a little while, pours cold water on the stones, and now and then sprinkles the men to keep them from fainting. After they have sweat as long as they can well endure it, they sally out, and (though it be in the depth of winter) forthwith plunge themselves over head and ears in cold water, which instantly closes up the pores, and preserves them from taking cold. The heat being thus suddenly driven from the extreme parts to the heart, makes them a little feeble for the present, but their spirits rally again, and they instantly recover their strength, and find their joints as supple and vigorous as if they never had traveled, or been indisposed. So that I may say as Bellonius does in his observations on the Turkish bagnio's, all the crudities contracted in their bodies are by this means evaporated and carried off. The Muscovites and Finlanders are said to use this way of sweating also. "It is almost a miracle," says Olearius, "to see how their bodies, accustomed to and hardened by cold, can endure so intense a heat, and how that when they are not able to endure it longer, they come out of the stoves as naked as they were born, both men and women, and plunge into cold water, or cause it to be poured on them." Trav. into Musc., I, 3, page 67.
The Indians also pulverize the roots of a kind of anchusa, or yellow alkanet, which they call puccoon, and of a sort of wild angelica, and mixing them together with bear's oil, make a yellow ointment, with which, after they have bathed, they anoint themselves Capapee; this supples the skin, renders them nimble and active, and withal so closes up the pores, that they lose but few of their spirits by perspiration. Piso relates the same of the Brazilians; and my Lord Bacon asserts, that oil and fat things do no less conserve the substance of the body, than oil-colors and varnish do that of the wood.
They have also a farther advantage of this ointment; for it keeps all lice, fleas, and other troublesome vermin from coming near them; which otherwise, by reason of the nastiness of their cabins, they would be very much infested with.
Smith talks of this puccoon, as if it only grew on the mountains, whereas it is common to all the plantations of the English, now on the land frontiers.
CHAPTER X.
OF THE SPORTS AND PASTIMES OF THE INDIANS.
§ 43. Their sports and pastimes are singing, dancing, instrumental music, and some boisterous plays, which are performed by running, catching and leaping upon one another; they have also one great diversion, to the practicing of which are requisite whole handfuls of little sticks or hard straws, which they know how to count as fast as they can cast their eyes upon them, and can handle with a surprising dexterity.