INDIAN BOAT DESIGNS. 183 



a device alike economical and of practical value in imparting elasticity invaluable 

 to boats always liable to ground when entering the shoal entrances of the home 

 lagoons. 



The rig is a single medium-sized lateen sail carried on a stout mast well raked 

 forwards ; sometimes a small mizzen^ also lateen rigged, is added. 



Fig. 23. — A reef-boat, Laccadive Islands. 



The island fishing boats and skiffs are built on the same general model save that 

 the stern is generally rather low ; the bow has often an exaggerated rise terminating 

 in a high upturned pointed beak (fig. 23). 



THE ANDAMAN ISlvANDS. 



In this group, thinly inhabited by wild Negrito tribes who are usually accounted 

 the very lowest in civilization of all existing races of the human species, it is surpris- 

 ing to find these people habitually employing both the primitive dugout and a well- 

 designed single outrigger canoe. 



The simple dug-out is the type adopted for their larger-sized canoes ; the out- 

 riggers have normally smaller hulls fashioned on identical lines. The shape of the 

 dugout both when used alone and as the hull of an outrigger canoe is peculiar ; it is 

 absolutely distinct from all Indian peninsular types, approximating closely to the 

 Australian type ; instead of the sharp ends invariably favoured among the former, 

 those of Andaman canoes are rounded, and the bow is prolonged horizontally for- 

 wards to form a overhanging shelf or platform to give footing for the harpooner on 

 the look-out for turtle and great fish; at the stern a corresponding but much 

 reduced projection is present. This form is distinctly primitive, characteristic of 

 people still in the crude hunter-stage when reliance is placed solely or mainly upon 

 barbed lances and harpoons and not upon nets for the capture of food from the sea. 



The outrigger frame is invariably single ; the float is connected with the hull by 

 multiple booms varying in number according to the size of the dugout — never less 

 than three nor more than twelve as an extreme maximum. The booms are slender 

 poles secured at their inner ends by being passed through holes in the sides of the 

 dugout close to the edge — a most peculiar method seen nowhere else in India but 

 found either exactly similar or in some variant form in the outriggers, both single 

 and double, of North Queensland, Australia. 



