MEMORIES OF MAHSEER 



nised as incomparable. Our difficulties of transport were by 

 no means light. There was no road, and the only way of 

 getting to the spot was through a deep gorge. There was no 

 footway, and the only mode of travel was by raft. Then where 

 were the raftmen, we asked, only to be told that they were 

 either dead or gone elsewhere. Here, indeed, was an Eastern 

 problem, with, as we surmised, an Eastern solution, for 

 baksheesh ultimately proved the means of producing as many 

 raftmen as we needed, though not before the day was at an 

 end. Daybreak next morning found us at the water's edge, 

 all impatience to be gone ; but the raftmen were hurrying 

 matters forward in usual Eastern fashion — that is to say, by 

 sitting round their shrivelled goatskins and chattering. It 

 was not, by the way, baksheesh that put new life into the pro- 

 ceedings this time, but anyhow the men quickly and cheer- 

 fully grasped what was required of them. The skins were 

 softened in the water and blown up through one of the legs, 

 a rickety old native bedstead lashed to each four skins with 

 odd lengths of string, loin-cloth, or pugaree, and the rafts 

 were ready in reasonable time. An odd procession it was that 

 now started out on the deep, still water of the gorge, the sides 

 of which gradually narrowed till the fairway seemed to end 

 altogether. And the method of propulsion was also curiously 

 simple. The water was too deep for poling, and there would 

 have been no room for paddles, so that four swimmers were 

 allotted to each raft. Naturally the progress was slow, since, 

 with their hands resting on the edge of the raft, they could 

 only use their legs, not in the strong froglike stroke familiar 



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