Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 3 of 7

Excerpt: '....'We embarked,' he writes, 'in a boat (at Hampi on the Tungabhadra) which exactly corresponds to my idea of the coracle of the ancient Britons. It consists of a very large, round wicker basket, about eight or nine feet in diameter, covered over with leather, and propelled by paddles. As a rule, it spins round and round, but the boatmen can keep it fairly straight, when exhorted to do so, as they were on this occasion. Some straw had been placed in the bottom of the coracle, and we were also allowed the luxury of chairs to sit upon, but it is safer to sit on the straw, as a chair in a coracle is generally in a state of unstable equilibrium. I remember once crossing a river in the Trichinopoly district in a coracle, to take a confirmation at a village on the other side. It was thought more suitable to the dignity of the occasion that I should sit upon a chair in the middle of the coracle, and I weakly consented to do so. All the villagers were assembled to meet us on the opposite bank; four policemen were drawn up as a guard of honour, and a brass band, brought from Tanjore, stood ready in the background. As we came to the shore, the villagers salaamed, the guard of honour saluted, the band struck up a tune faintly resembling 'See the conquering hero comes,' the coracle bumped heavily against the shelving bank, my chair tipped up, [3]and I was deposited, heels up, on my back in the straw!... We were rowed for about two miles down the stream. The current was very swift, and there were rapids at frequent intervals. Darkness overtook us, and it was not altogether a pleasant sensation being whirled swiftly over the rapids in our frail-looking boat, with ugly rocks jutting out of the stream on either side. But the boatmen seemed to know the river perfectly, and were extraordinarily expert in steering the coracle with their paddles.''