The floating baths consist of a wooden framework, say 100 feet long, moored in the stream, and through which the water runs freely, while a set of strong bars and chains and iron network forms a false bottom, shallow at one end and deeper at the other, so that the bather cannot be carried away by the current.
Round the sides there are bathing boxes and steps, ladders, and spring boards for the various degree of aquatic proficiency.
The youths and even the little boys on the Rhine are very good swimmers, and many of them dive well. Sometimes there is a ladies' bath of similar construction, from which a good deal of very lively noise may be heard when the fair bathers are in a talkative mood.
The soldiers at military stations near the rivers are marched down regularly to bathe, and one day we found a large number of young recruits assembled for their general dip.
While some were in the water others were firing at the targets for ball practice. There were three targets, each made of cardboard sheets, fastened upon wooden uprights. A marker safely protected in a ball-proof _mantelet_ was placed so close to these targets that he could see all three at once. One man of the firing party opposite each target having fired, his bullet passed through the pasteboard and left a clear round hole in it, while the ball itself was buried in the earth behind, and so could be recovered again, instead of being dashed into fragments as on our iron targets, and then spattered about on all sides, to the great danger of the marker and everybody else.
When three men had thus fired, signals were made by drum, flag, and bugle, and the firing ceased. The marker then came out and pointed to the bullet-mark on each target, and having patched up the holes he returned within his mantelet, and the firing was resumed. This very safe and simple method of ball practice is much better than that used in our military shooting.
Once as we rounded a point there was a large herd of cattle swimming across the stream in close column, and I went right into the middle of them to observe how they would welcome a stranger. In the Nile you see the black oxen swim over the stream night and morning, reminding you of Pharaoh's dream about the "kine" coming up out of the river, a notion that used to puzzle in boyhood days, but which is by no means incongruous when thus explained. The Bible is a book that bears full light to be cast upon it, for truth looks more true under more light.
