152 J. HOIINELL ON 



and coasting, appear to have their hull modelled on a more beamy and 

 shallower type than anything based upon the fundamental Arab 

 design. As the Ratnagiri men employ for their lighter inshore work a 

 much flared dug-out with built-on upper strakes also flared, it is pro- 

 bable that their large boats, beamy and of little depth, have been 

 evolved from the flared dug-out rather than from the deep Arab type. 



{d) Between the Ratnagiri region and that of South Kanara, the outrigger in 

 various forms, but none so highly developed as in the Ratnagiri craft, 

 is dominant and hence suggests long-continued employment, and an 

 ancient foreign connection long antedating the advent of Arab influence. 



{e) Malabar and Travancore furnish uniform and purely indigenous types of 

 canoe as the only craft in local use, with the trivial exception of 

 recently introduced cargo lighters of Arab design and of a curious form 

 of backwater "snake-boat," used for important water festivals in 

 Travancore, which shows a surprising resemblance in important points 

 with the Phoenician type of armed galley ; this is probably merely a 

 case of parallelism. 



Gulf of Mannar Region. 



As Cape Comorin is approached going south along the Travancore coast, all 

 the familiar landmarks of the southern section of the west coast begin to change. 

 The Malayali language becomes corrupt with Tamil admixtures, and eventually is lost 

 in an equally uncouth and corrupt Tamil ; the habits and customs of the people 

 are also Tamilized, and even more notable is an alteration in the character of the 

 vegetation. The dense humid tropic lowlands where plant life riots in luxuriance 

 and where the coconut dominates all cultivation, gives place to naked sand wastes, 

 the coconut withers away and in its place rises stiff and unbending the formal 

 Palmyra palm and the inhospitable babul. Coincident with these changes, we find 

 the methods of fishing also begin to alter. The crank dug-out canoe to which the 

 Malayali adheres with such touching fidelity, as far north as Quilon finds its 

 supremacy challenged by small catamarans of primitive form, constructed of from 

 4 to 5 logs tied together raft-fashion. From Quilon southwards both forms of craft 

 exist side by side as far as Colachel where catamarans of improved form — ''boat- 

 catamarans" — appear and finally oust both the dug-out and the raft catamaran. 

 Between Colachel and Cape Comorin the coast is particularly exposed and surf- 

 beaten throughout the year and is also bare of any landing place suitable for dug-out 

 canoes. Beyond the Cape the same form of catamaran is numerous for over loo 

 miles, ending only at Mukkur in the Ramnad district. Throughout the whole of 

 this tract of coast the only important caste of fishermen is that of the Roman 

 Catholic Parawas, whose ancestors for political reasons become converted to Chris- 

 tianity on the coming of the Portuguese. Besides the boat-catamaran these people 

 use largely a second type of craft — the " boat-canoe " —which consists of a Malabar 

 dug-out spread by wedges and heightened by flared wash-strakes of 9 to 10 inches 



