Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/70

56 were lowered over the ship's side, and in two boats we started for the shore.

The Masulah boat, used upon the Madras coast for landing passengers and freight from vessels lying in the roadstead, is a rudely built boat, some twenty-five or thirty feet long, ten feet wide, and seven deep. The planks of which it is made are not fastened with nails, but sewed together with twine made from the husk of the cocoanut; and straw is stuffed between the seams. The bottom of the boat is covered with brushwood, on which you lay your trunks secure from the water that constantly enters by the seams, and swashes below. The peculiar advantage of their construction is, that the boats, (in taking the beach,) give and twist and bend in the often terrific surf of Madras, when an English boat would be dashed to pieces. The men, ten or twelve in number, sit upon cross beams at the top of the boat, pulling away at long oars, or rather poles, with heart-shaped paddles tied to their ends. In the stern, the tindal or steersman, with a long, blade-shaped oar, stands on a boarded space just back of the awning which screens the passengers from sun and spray. With grunts and groans and discordant songs, the half-naked