3-065-871 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Crossing a river in India, 1874. '...travellers are often obliged to cross rivers in very primitive fashion, with much delay and alarm, not unfrequently accompanied by danger and loss. The frail but buoyant coracle or native boat of wickerwork covered with...hides may answer its purpose well enough...But the appearance of this vessel is not very assuring to the timid traveller, unaccustomed to this mode of crossing rivers at...places where crocodiles abound. His belief in "there's nothing like leather" is rudely shaken by the very patent fact of its being the only barrier betwixt his person and those hungry jaws or the depths of the eddying stream...In the Engraving we see bullocks laden with bags of grain coming down to the river. To the left is the baggage-cart...To the right are natives cooking on the edge of the water, a bullock-man swimming across with his bullocks, and native servants being conveyed in a boat with the usual two-wheeled coach, which is put bodily into the coracle and more than fills it. The "sahib," or English gentleman, with his "mem-sahib," or lady, his baby and boy, servants, and dog, pretty well crowd another, whilst the horse-keeper swims the horse and makes him assist in dragging the boat'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.