Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/119

 where all the strength of his crew is insufficient to drag the boat up stream, and often in such rapids the tracking rope breaks, when there are only two or three persons on board; the boat descends the stream like an arrow at the mercy of the current; perhaps it strikes upon a bank and upsets, or it may be that a mass, large as an elephant, tumbles from the high bank and swamps it. Then there are storms and lea-shores, and dashing waves equally formidable to the crazy craft and the primitive crew, as to a ship well manned at sea, and, what is worse, the boatmen on any emergency become panic-struck and desert the boat and the voyager at his utmost need, and worse still, the inhabitants on shore will render him no assistance. In the event of his boat's going to the bottom they will not allow him to enter their huts, no, not even their cow-houses, and he is driven to the shift of taking up his quarters in some uninhabited ruin. The natives of India with all their gentleness and inoffensiveness are probably the most inhospitable race on the face of the globe to all but those of their own caste. When wrecked, the stranger will run no risk of being injured in person or robbed of his property, but he must calculate on no fellow-feeling for his destitute condition.

But travelling by country boats, especially up