Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 2.djvu/401

. ii. OCT. 22, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

329

THE MUSSUK. (10 th S. ii. 263.)

HAVING myself crossed a broad river on a mussak, may I give MB. THOMAS my ex- perience of it ?

I was travelling with my husband in 1894 in the Himalayas from Ley to Simla. After leaving Kulu we had very bad weather ; for a whole month we had deluges of rain, causing heavy floods, and washing away all the bridges and roads between Kulu and the Indus. It was impossible to reach any bridge over the Indus, which was a swirling yellow flood, 22 feet above its normal level, and as wide as the Thames at Westminster. Our only means of crossing was on mussaks. Those we used were of bullock skins, shaven of hair, the legs cut off about the knees. The head was left, but carefully sewn up. The inflation was done by the mouth, through one leg. When the raussak was fully inflated the end was turned down a few inches and tied tightly round with string. Across the mussak lay a native, who used a small wooden paddle with his hands, paddling with his feet on the other side. I curled myself up longside him and held him round his shoulders, and off we went. I candidlv admit I was in a "blue funk," as schoolboys say. When we were once launched on the flood, the sensation was delightful ; the extreme buoyancy of the mussak (although so heavily weighted) took it to the top of every swirling wave. We were rushed down, the man paddling across for all he was worth, and landed about a mile down stream on the opposite bank. The river took a very sharp curve here, so the mussak men were enabled to reland only about three-quarters of a mile whence they started, and carried their mussaks back over- land. Our servants and all our baggage came across in the same way. We had twelve mussaks going for three hours to get all across. We were so delighted with the sensation that lower down the river my hus- band and I each got on a mussak and were paddled about two miles down the Indus to Balaspore, our destination for the night.

Frequently rafts are made by tying a small platform of flat logs or a charpoy (erroneously called a " charpon " by Mr. Sandford) on the top of four to eight or more mussaks. This kind of mussak must not be confounded with the small hand mussak used throughout India by the natives. I have also seen it used in Morocco for carrying water, the neck of which (not the leg) is open, and is a goat-skin.

The mussak for floating does not, in the ordinary sense of the words, support a swimmer, as the man sits or lies on it. I saw quite small children at Balaspore on tiny mussaks, which must have been skins of a smaller animal, paddling them most cleverly in the rapid stream. I think the person in India who gave the astonishing replies to MR. THOMAS confused the word " swimmer " in his mind. The man sitting on the mussak and yet using his arms and hands might be called a swimmer, and this "swimmer could easily, while crossing a river, reinflate the skin by untying the leg, holding it very tight while blowing it out ; and because the Assyrian sculptures do not illustrate this, it does not follow it was never done. I believe the correct spelling of the word is "mussak." Far from a mussak carrying only light parcels, &c., it carries, as I have told you, two persons of no light weight, my husband weighing nearly twelve stone. I think the answer to No. 4 query is quite wrong so far as the Himalayas are concerned. I would willingly send MR. THOMAS a rough drawing of a mussak if he wishes for it.

P. A. F. STEPHENSON. Neuchatel, Switzerland.

Having lived many years in India, I am able to testify to the general correctness of the statements contained in Mr. J. R. Sand- ford's letter. There is a misprint in the penultimate paragraph, where for " charpon " should be read charpoy, which means a four- legged bedstead.

I do not think MR. THOMAS'S other informant is wrong in saying that a person can learn to swim with a mussuk in three or Pour trials. It is not a question of swimming, but of floating ; and if a person has sufficient nerve to " let himself go," he could do this at the first trial, should necessity require it.

The word is derived from the Persian mashk 'not mashak, as in Yule), which means a goat or sheep skin, used for holding buttermilk or water. The English seem to have a difficulty "n pronouncing sh before a consonant ; and similarly the person who carries the mussuk, he bihishtiy or denizen of Paradise, has been corrupted into the useful and necessary ~>heesty. W. F. PRIDEAUX.

PURCELL'S Music FOR 'THE TEMPEST ' (10 th S. ii. 164, 270). Personally I am very thank- 7 ul to PROF. CUMMINGS for his contribution >n this perplexing subject, as one of the facts he educes enables me to decide an important side issue. Hitherto all the editors of Dryden mve taken it for granted that the anonymous and misleading "comedy "of 'The Tempest'