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BRIEFER ARTICLES. 



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A DATE-LEAF BOAT OF ARABIA. 



(with three text figures) 



While traveling up the coast of Arabia last February the writer's 

 attention was attracted to some curious craft made entirely of date 

 leaves that came alongside as the '^Peinba" steamed into the desert 

 harbor of Jask on the Arabian coast. The coast of the Persian gulf 

 is so barren that one can 



travel for many days along 

 it withoutfinding so much 

 as a single tree or shrub, 

 and at this place the only 

 plants of any size were 

 some groves of date palms 

 and a few acacias which 

 had been planted by the 

 English employees of the 

 Persian gulf cable com- 

 pany, which has a station 

 at Jask. 



Wood is so scarce in 

 the region that even the 

 roots of such small desert 

 shrubs as are to be found 



are dug up for fuel, and timber large enough for boat building would 

 have to be brought by water from Bombay. It is necessity, there- 

 fore, which has invented these curious date boats of Jask. They are 

 niade of the midribs of the date palm leaves, which are about an 

 inch and a half in diameter and ten feet long. These tough mid- 

 ribs, from which the leaflets have been removed, are fastened together 

 by means of wooden pegs and strong twine in the form of a boat. 

 No attempt is made to match joints, but a false bottom is built to the 

 craft, and the mass of light midribs that lie beneath this bottom buoy 

 the boat up out of the water so that the inside remains quite dry. 

 1902] 451 



