INDIAN BOAT DESIGNS. 



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through these holes coir yarn is passed and tightened over the caulking strips which 

 are placed both inside and outside the seams in the hull. 



No deck is provided, the cargo when loaded being protected by a penthouse 

 covering, thatched with cadjans, a method adding to the archaic appearance of these 

 old-world craft. They hail almost entirely from the coast villages lying between 

 Colombo and Galle — the south-west coast — a purely Sinhalese region save for some 

 settlements of so-called "Moormen " — the descendants of Indian Muhammadans from 

 the opposite side of the Gulf. Few of these outrigger dhonis are now in existence 

 and soon they will disappear entirely. Their survival or rather their presence on the 

 Ceylon Coast is of mach interest ethnologically in view of the representation of ships 

 of the same general type among the sculptures on the great Buddhist shrine at Boro 

 Budurin Java, dating back to between 750 and 900 A.D. 



Fig. 5. — Outrigger canoe used by Jaffna schooners and dhonis as ship's dinghy. 



The Tamils of the north of Ceylon and the Jaffna Islands do not employ outrigger 

 canoes except small ones carried by coasters for communication with the shore (fig. 5) 

 using instead, according to the character of the coast, either catamarans or dug-out 

 canoes for ordinary fishing, and undecked plank-built boats for pearl and chank fish- 

 ing and light cargo work. These last-named are of no special interest, being merely 

 large boats built on the lines of a broad canoe. They have a single mast stepped a 

 little forward of amidships ; the rig is a square lug little removed from a square sail. 

 The yard is hauled to the mast-head through a square two-way pulley fitted per- 

 manently to the top of the mast, in the same fashion as that followed by the smaller 

 Tuticorin fishing canoes. This square pulley truck is characteristic of the Jaffna 

 rig, as is the love of their owners for a bright green or blue coat of paint over the 

 whole hull, in this differing alike from the Kilakarai habit of leaving the planks bare 

 and from the sombre Tuticorin preference for a coat of tar. 



