150 J. HORNELL ON 



full of finely modelled fishing and coasting craft in the fair weather season, these 

 boats are slab-sided, sharp ended, punt-shaped craft — bad plank-built enlargements 

 of a dug-out canoe ; they boast no rudder, have a single mast bearing a square sail 

 as unnautical in shape as an inland tailor would cut and fashion but presumably are 

 cheap to construct and answer their purpose in the calm waters where alone they are 

 used (PI. V, fig. 4). 



Mai^abar and Travancore. 



The dug-out and the pseudo-dug-out — ^its counterpart in planks— have the field 

 entirely to themselves in this long stretch of coast from Cannanore to Quilon. The 

 former is a beautifully fashioned craft, the latter — like the Mangalore lighter — an ugly 

 travesty. The dug-out is more numerous and while it ranges in size from a tiny one- 

 boy canoe to the big odam with its crew of eight, the plank-built canoe is usually of 

 the large size only. It is particularly in evidence at Tanur, where it appears to be in 

 the majority. 



There is so little variation in the type that there is almost nothing to say of them. 

 None is provided with a rudder, steering being effected by means of a big paddle on 

 one quarter, used for propulsion as well as control. Few of them use a sail ; when 

 thej^ do, it is either a small and ineffective square sail or a spritsail. Beach lighters, 

 the equivalent of the masula boats of the East Coast, are again merely clumsy flat- 

 bottomed enlargements of the plank-built fishing canoe, but the large cargo lighters 

 which have often to carry cargo to steamers in the outer anchorage at Calicut are 

 weatherly craft reproducing in a rough and untidy form the Arab features of grab- 

 bow, deep fore-foot, sharp raking stern and large lateen sail. They are undecked, with- 

 out poop, and are indeed but large editions of the single-masted Bombay machwa. 

 The strength of the Arab strain in their design at Cannanore, Calicut, Beypore and 

 Ponnani is due to the long-established trade connections between these centres and 

 the Arabian coasts, and to the not inconsiderable infusion of Arab blood among the 

 better classes of the local Mappilla population. Particularly close is the Arab connec- 

 tion with Calicut. As soon as the south-west monsoon moderates, Arab buggalas 

 begin to arrive, those from the Persian Gulf with dates, those from Karachi and 

 Bombay with more general cargo. The cargoes having been discharged, those requir- 

 ing it are hove down on the beach to get advantage of the excellent repair facilities 

 existing here. Then the return cargo of Gulf boats must comprise a big assortment 

 of ship-building materials for the boat-building yards of Bahrein, Koweit, and the 

 Tigris and Euphrates ; the nahkudah and his men have a busy time for weeks on end, 

 selecting and chaffering over the purchase of timber and coir yarn, blocks and bolts, 

 and all the varied etceteras of ship chandlery. Then the timber must be sawn and 

 the coir yarn twisted into cordage and the huge hawsers these men love, under their 

 immediate supervision. 



In South Malabar, in Cochin and in Travancore, where an extensive inland water 

 trade exists by virtue of the great network of backwater channels in the low footland 

 skirting the Ghats, particularly fine dug-outs are employed. Compared with the 



