WATERS OF WESTERN INDIA. 18 
pushing up stream, this is obviously a good reason for swimming 
low ; just as we, in the like case, choose the dead water under the 
bank. 
The Sindi provides himself in the first instance with an Y-shaped 
pole over 20 fect long, and supplies the fork with netting, till he 
has something like an huge hideous landing net. Having next 
secured an ‘“embarcation” (whereof I shall discuss the varieties 
hereafter), he launches himself on the Indus, and drifts down stream 
holding his net vertically. As he floats with the rapid surface- 
current, the resistance of the slow bottom-water makes his net bag: 
up-stream, just as a steamer outstripping alight breeze leaves her 
smoky pennant behind her. Into the open mouth of this the Palla, 
pushing up with the crazy impulse of all spawning fish, runs 
headlong, and warns the fisherman of his presence by a chuck, as 
he strikes the pocket of the net. It is probable that he would 
hardly have sense enough to back out, but all trouble of considering 
the matter is spared him. On feeling the ‘ chack,” the fisherman, 
with a sharp upward turn of his arms, causes the long purse of the 
net to turn once on itself, effectively twisting in the prisoner, and 
then shortens the shaft and net, hand over hand, till he can get hig 
finger and thumb into the latter’s gills, through which, if he has no 
boat, he straightway runs a needle and thread of the sort already 
described in treating of the “* Dumbro.” Some scrupulous Mussul- 
mans are said to cut the Palla’s throat with a knife, according to 
the formulas of the law. But I never saw this done myself; it is 
clearly unnecessary from a common-sense point of view in most cases ; 
and the Sindi fishermen notoriously consider the gills as the result 
of a throat-cutting performed by the Prophet himself, to sanction 
to their usage even fish otherwise unclean (the large scale-less 
Sibiridcea). Under certain circumstances, presently to be noticed, 
there is another reason for the use of the knife. 
The Palla fisher, when he has got to the bottom of his “cast” or 
drift, must get up to the top of it again, as best he can, and de 
capo to the end of his working day. His most famous and 
extraordinary craft is an earthen pot, and since the wise men of 
Gotham went to sea in a bowl, nothing quainter has beenseen. The 
Palla-pot is a huge, lenticular-shaped, neckless and bottomless jar. 
By the last phrase I mean that, like many Indian pots, it has no 
bottom capable of holding it upright. This being launched, the 
fisherman balances himself on one shoulder of it, and floats down 
