1920. | W. ANNANDALE & S. L. Hora: The Fish of Seistan. 195 
bundle is bent upwards at either end and fastened together by 
five bands of rope. Considerable force is exercised in doing this 
as the stability of the craft depends largely on the tightness of the 
bundles. After the rope has been twisted round the leaves two 
men pull the opposite ends taught, pressing against the bundle 
with their feet and sitting on the ground. The leaves are left 
free at two ends of the bundle, but the unbound part is consider- 
ably longer at the stouter end (at which the basal part of the 
leaves is situated) than at the narrower, the stern of the embryo 
raft. Three bundles are thus formed for the body of the raft. 
They are then tied together, in the same way as each was made 
individually, by some nine bands of leaf-rope. Two of these 
bands are situated near each end, and those at the thick end or 
prow are tied very tight so that the cut basal ends of the leaves 
expand somewhat. Finally the rail, a thinner bundle of leaves, 
is added above at each side for comfort’s sake to a passenger, and 
the whole is finished by a short cross-bundle in front between the 
two rails. 
A craft of this kind has a curious resemblance, when unloaded 
in the water, to an Egyptian mummy (pl. xvii, fig. 1). It can 
carry a passenger as well as a boatman, who propels it by punting 
with a pole of tree-tamarisk, but can be used only in very calm 
water. It is only on exceptionally still days that the Hunters or 
the Herdsmen, who also use rafts of the kind in moving about 
the reed-beds, venture into the open lake upon them. They are 
temporary structures, depending as they do for their buoyancy 
entirely on the air enclosed in the air-cells of the leaves, which 
soon decay. ‘Their life is never longer than two months; in hot 
weather less. The Seistani name for them is ¢uéin, from tut, a 
bulrush. 
My figures in the text (figs. 16A & B) are drawn from a model 
made at Lab-i-Baring on the Hamun. It is accurate except in two 
points,—(1) the leaves employed are of full size and are therefore 
relatively larger and less numerous than would be the case in the 
real raft, and (2) the protuberance at the prow is rather too small 
(cf. the photograph on pl. xvii). 
On our return journey from Seistan I happened to show this 
model to Mr. W. J. Good of the Calcutta Port Trust, who was 
then a member of the Indian Reserve of Officers. He told me 
that he had seen similar rafts in the Roorkee district of the United 
Provinces and kindly put me into communication with Lt.Col. A. 
Cunningham, R.E., who has supplied me with the following interest- 
ing note, with the photograph reproduced in fig. 3 of plate xvii, 
and with the model from which text-figure 16C has been drawn. 
“The floats used for fishing in the jheels, of the Solani and 
Ganges Rivers kadiy near Roorkee, U.P., about 20 miles to the 
South East, are about 8’ long by 2’ diameter, and the cross section 
is circular, flattened at top and bottom a little. ‘They are solid, 
made of the local jheel grasses, the bundle being tied round at 
several places with rough ties of grass. The prow is formed into 
