Already a few enthusiasts are gathered here, on the glowing sands. But
the water is still cold; indeed, the Tiber is never too warm for me. If
you like it yet more chill, you must walk up to where the Aniene
discharges its waves whose temperature, at this season, is of a kind to
tickle up a walrus.
Whether it be due to the medley of races or to some other cause, there
is a singular variety of flesh-tints among the bathers here. I wish my
old friend Dr. Bowles could have seen it; we used to be deeply immersed,
both of us, in the question of the chromatophores, I observing their
freakish behaviour in the epidermis of certain frogs, while he studied
their action on the human skin and wrote an excellent little paper on
sunburn - a darker problem than it seems to be. [20]
These men and boys do not grow uniformly sunburnt. They display so many
different colour-shades on their bodies that an artist would be
delighted with the effect. From that peculiar milky hue which, by reason
of some pigment, contrives to resist the rays, the tints diverge; the
reds, the scarcer group, traversing every gradation from pale rose to
the ruddiest of copper - not excluding that strange marbled complexion
concerning which I cannot make up my mind whether it be a beauty or a
defect; while the xanthous tones, the yellows, pass through silvery gold
and apricot and cafe au lait to a duskiness approaching that of the
negro.
