“Their broad, flat foreheads, their falling breasts, their ill-shaped limbs, the awkwardness of their positions, and the filth which intrudes through their finery—­all these render a Chinook or Clatsop beauty in full attire one of the most disgusting objects in nature.”

Muir says of the Mono Indians of the California Mountains (93):  “The dirt on their faces was fairly stratified, and seemed so ancient and so undisturbed it might also possess a geological significance.”  Navajo girls “usually evince a catlike aversion to water.”  (Schoolcraft, IV., 214.) Cozzens relates (128) how, among the Apaches, “the sight of a man washing his face and hands almost convulsed them with laughter.”  He adds that their personal appearance explained their surprise.  Burton (80) found among the Sioux a dislike to cleanliness “which nothing but the fear of the rod will subdue.”  “In an Indian village,” writes Neill (79), “all is filth and litter....  Water, except in very warm weather, seldom touches their bodies.”

The Comanches are “disgustingly filthy in their persons.”  (Schoolcraft, I., 235.) The South American Waraus “are exceedingly dirty and disgusting in their habits, and their children are so much neglected that their fingers and toes are frequently destroyed by vermin.” (Bernau, 35.) The Patagonians “are excessively filthy in their personal habits.” (Bourne, 56.) The Mundrukus “are very dirty” (Markham, 172), etc.

Of the Damara negroes, Anderson says (N., 50):  “Dirt often accumulates to such a degree on their persons as to make the color of their skins totally undistinguishable;” and Galton (92) “could find no pleasure in associating or trying to chat with these Damaras, they were so filthy and disgusting in every way.”  Thunberg writes of the Hottentots (73) that they “find a peculiar pleasure in filth and stench;” wherein they resemble Africans in general.  Griffith declares that the hill tribes of India are “the dirtier the farther we advance;” elsewhere[114] we read: 

“Both males and females, as a class, are very dirty and filthy in both person and habits.  They appear to have an antipathy to bathing, and to make matters worse, they have a habit of anointing their bodies with ghee (melted butter);”

and of another of these tribes: 

“The Karens are a dirty people.  They never use soap, and their skins are enamelled with dirt.  When water is thrown on them, it rolls off their backs like globules of quicksilver on a marble slab.  To them bathing has a cooling, but no cleansing effect.”

The Mishinis are “disgustingly dirty.”  By the Kirgliez “uncleanliness is elevated into a virtue hallowed by tradition.”  The Kalmucks are described as filthy, the Kamtschadales as exceedingly so, etc.

REASONS FOR BATHING.