Soap is made by keeping fat constantly simmering in lye of ashes (see preceding paragraphs) for some days; adding fresh lye as fast as the water boils away, or is sucked up by the fat.  After one or two trials, the knack of soap-making is easily caught.  The presence of salt makes the soap hard; its absence, soft; now many ashes contain a good deal of salt, and these may make the soap too hard, and will have to be mixed with other sorts of ashes before being used:  experience must guide the traveller in this.  A native woman will be probably be found without difficulty, who will attend night and day to the pot-boiling for a small payment.  Inferior soap may be made by simply putting some grease into a tub of very strong lye, and letting it remain for two or three weeks, without any boiling, but stirring it every day.

Marine Soap is made of soda lye (the lye of seaweeds) and cocoa-nut oil; it makes a lather with salt water, but it has the defect of being very bulky.

To wash Flannels.—­Make a lather of soap on a small piece of flannel, and rub with it those parts that require the most cleansing, such as the neck and wristbands of a shirt; then plunge the shirt in water as hot as you can bear it, rinsing it and wringing it out very thoroughly, and hang it up to dry as quickly as possible.  Soda should not be used with coloured flannels.

Washing Oneself.—­Warmth of Dirt.—­There is no denying the fact, though it be not agreeable to confess it, that dirt and grease are great protectors of the skin against inclement weather, and that therefore the leader of a party should not be too exacting about the appearance of his less warmly-clad followers.  Daily washing, if not followed by oiling, must be compensated by wearing clothes.  Take the instance of a dog.  He will sleep out under any bush, and thrive there, so long as he is not washed, groomed, and kept clean; but if he be, he must have a kennel to lie in, the same is the case with a horse; he catches cold if he is groomed in the day, and turned out at nights; but he never catches cold when left wholly to himself.  A savage will never wash unless he can grease himself afterwards—­grease takes the place of clothing to him.  There must be a balance between the activity of the skin and the calls upon it; and where the exposure is greater, there must the pores be more defended.  In Europe, we pass our lives in a strangely artificial state; our whole body swathed in many folds of dress, excepting the hands and face—­the first of which are frequently gloved.  We can afford to wash, but naked men cannot.

Best Times for Washing.—­The most convenient time for a traveller to make his toilet, in rough travel, is after the early morning’s ride, a bath being now and then taken in the afternoon.  It is trying work to wash in ice-cold water, in the dark and blowing morning; besides which, when the sun rises up, its scorching heat tells severely on a face that has been washed.