14 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
as described. While he has only to hold the net upright, this is 
all fair sailing, but when it comes to getting in a fish, no Caucasian 
has ever made outhow he maintains his balance, which is so ticklish 
that the knife must then really be brought in to quiet the fish 
before it is consigned to the hold of this queer ship. If he overlies 
the hole, a strange disaster befalls him. For even the top water of 
the Indus is cooler than the air in a pot that has been lying on its 
broiling shores, and the rapid contraction of the contained air on 
cooling will hermetically seal, for a time, the pot to the stomach of 
any one who allows himself to loll over its mouth. It is said that 
this disaster overtook the only European who ever dared to be 
skipper of a “ Palla-pot,” a mythical Major, whose vagaries are fast 
becoming good food for the folk-lorists and Solar legend hunters. 
Where the drift is long, the ponderous pot would obviously be 
inconvenient on the return-trip, and in such places it is usually 
replaced by gourd floats, the needle and thread arrangement serving 
to secure the fish. But both of these vessels are most appropriate to 
the neighbourhood of markets for fresh fish. 
Now there are long reaches of the Indus almost desolate (but for 
the Palla-fishers), and on these the fishery is conducted with a view 
to salting or drying the take. Here we have another ship, the 
“ Palla-Dhundi” or “Shad-punt.”? The simple architecture of its 
hull is not very unlike that of a Thames punt. Over this, a few 
tamarisk poles and mats form a sort of spar-deck, under which the 
ship’s company live by day, and over it they sleep at night, as 
in their atrocious climate every man secks the slightest available 
elevation to sleep on, in the hope of getting whatever breeze may 
be stirring. 
A “ Palla-Dhundi” is a queer little Noah’s ark. There will be 
init one or two Mohdnas (the fisher caste of Sind), their wives and 
children, a couple of goats, landed here and there to browse on the 
often desolate shore, a dog or two, and possibly a cat. It has 
probably a dozen outriggers, each of which, under favourable 
circumstances, sustains a half tame pelican or heron. The pelicans 
are eaten and their oil sold (asa native medicine). ‘The herons 
are sold as subjects for falconry, which is a very living sport in 
Sind. It is said that both otters and cormorants are kept to help 
in the fishery, but I cannot now remember having seen either so 
used, though both are often caught by the Mohanas, who are great 
fowlers and hunters, as well as fishermen. 
