Our method was at once
effective and simple: if halting, we took off our clothes and sat on
them; if riding, they were placed under the leathern shabraque of the
mule's saddle, or under any article of similar material, bed or bag, that
lay on the camel's pack. A good shower-bath did none of us any harm; and
as soon as the rain was over, and the moisture on our skins had
evaporated, we had our garments as warm, dry, and comfortable as if they
had been before a fire. In populous districts, we kept on our drawers, or
supplied their place with a piece of rag, or a skin; and then, when the
rain was over, we wrapped ourselves up in our 'quarry,' and taking off
the wetted articles, hung them over the animal's cruppers to dry."
Another traveller writes:--
"The only means we had of preserving our sole suit of clothes dry from
the drenching showers of rain, was by taking them off and stuffing them
into the hollow of a tree, which in the darkness of the night we could do
with propriety."
Mr. Palliser's boatmen at Chagre took each a small piece of cloth, under
which they laid their clothes every time that they stripped in
expectation of a coming storm.
Dipping clothes wetted with rain, in Sea-water.--Captain Bligh, who was
turned adrift in an open boat after the mutiny of the 'Bounty,' writes
thus about his experience:--"With respect to the preservation of our
health, during a course of 16 days of heavy and almost continual rain, I
would recommend to every one in a similar situation the method we
practised, which is to dip their clothes in the salt water and wring them
out as often as they become filled with rain: it was the only resource we
had, and I believe was of the greatest service to us, for it felt more
like a change of dry clothes than could well be imagined.
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