Still, made with Earthen Pots and a Metal Basin.—­A very simple distilling apparatus is used in Bhootan; the sketch will show the principle on which it is constructed.

[Sketch of apparatus].

Salt water is placed in a pot, set over the fire.  Another vessel, but without top or bottom, which, for the convenience of illustration, I have indicated in the sketch by nothing more than a dotted line, is made to stand upon the pot.  It serves as a support for a metal basin, S, which is filled with salt water, and acts as a condenser.  When the pot boils, the steam ascends and condenses itself on the under surface of the basin S, whence it drops down and is Collected in a cup, C, that is supported by a rude tripod of sticks, T, standing in the inside of the iron pot.

Occasional Means of Quenching Thirst.—­A Shower of Rain will yield a good supply.  The clothes may be stripped off and spread out, and the rain-water sucked from them.  Or, when a storm is approaching a cloth or blanket may be made fast by its four corners, and a quantity of bullets thrown in the middle of it; they will cause the water that it receives, to drain to one point and trickle through the cloth, into a cup or bucket set below.  A reversed umbrella will catch water; but the first drippings from it, or from clothes that have been long unwashed, as from a macintosh cloak, are intolerably nauseous and very unwholesome.  It must be remembered, that thirst is greatly relieved by the skin being wetted, and therefore it is well for a man suffering from thirst, to strip to the rain.  Rain-water is lodged for some days in the huge pitcher-like corollas of many tropical flowers.

Sea-water.—­Lives of sailors have more than once been saved when turned adrift in a boat, by bathing frequently and keeping their clothes damp with salt-water.  However, after some days, the nauseous taste of the salt-water is very perceptible in the saliva, and at last becomes unbearable; such, at least was the experience of the surgeon of the wrecked ‘Pandora.’

Dew-water is abundant near the sea-shore, and may be collected in the same way as rain-water.  The storehouse at Angra Pequena, in S. W. Africa, in 1850, was entirely supplied by the dew-water deposited on its roof.  The Australians who live near the sea, go among the wet bushes with a great piece of bark, and brush into it the dew-drops from the leaves with a wisp of grass; collecting in this way large quantities of water.  Eyre used a sponge for the same purpose, and appears to have saved his life by its use.

Animal Fluids are resorted to in emergencies; such as the contents of the paunch of an animal that has been shot; its taste is like sweet-wort.  Mr. Darwin writes of people who, catching turtles, drank the water that was found in their Pericardia; it was pure and sweet.  Blood will stand in the stead of solid food, but it is of no avail in the stead of water, on account of its saline qualities.