On an affair of this description, Mr.
Andersson, with seven attendants, and two canoes hauled up upon it,
descended the river for five days. The second reed raft was a small and
neat one, and used for ferries; it was a mattress of reeds, 5 feet long,
3 broad, and some 8 inches thick, tied together with strips of the reeds
themselves; to each of its four corners was fixed a post, made of an
upright faggot of reeds, 18 inches high; other faggots connected the tops
of the posts horizontally, in the place of rails: this was all; it held
one or two men, and nothing but reeds or rushes were used in its
construction.
Rafts of distended Hides.--"A single ox-hide may be made into a float
capable of sustaining about 300 lbs.; the skin is to be cut to the
largest possible circle, then gathered together round a short tube, to
the inner end of which a valve, like that of a common pair of bellows,
has been applied; it is inflated with bellows, and, as the air escapes by
degrees, it may be refilled every ten or twelve hours." ('Handbook for
Field Service.')
We read of the skins of animals, stuffed with hay to keep them distended,
having been used by Alexander the Great, and by others.
Goatskin rafts are extensively used on the Tigris and elsewhere. These
are inflated through one of the legs: they are generally lashed to a
framework of wood, branches, and reeds, in such a way that the leg is
accessible to a person sitting on the raft: when the air has in part
escaped, he creeps round to the skins, one after the other, untying and
re-inflating them in succession.
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