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Punjab Ferryboat
The Illustrated London
News - The road from Bilaspoor to the frontier ferry, which
skirts the river, is paved with flint stones about a foot
in diameter, and as often loose as not, dislodging the unsteady
foot of a luckless wayfarer, and knocking it violently to
one side or the other; the natives, however, step lightly
over these stones without once stumbling. For a mile onward,
the road adjoins the left bank of the Sutlej; it then loads
to a rapid brook, and thence to the ferry-boat, which is
nothing more or less than a sqaure box of wood strongly
put together, and havind different partitions a foot high.
The nativs swim across the river with the half of an ox's
skin inflated with wind in an ingenious way. Having carried
this on their shoulders to the shore, they spread themselves
upon it on the water, laying fast hold with one hand, while
they strike the water with a piece of timber in the other.
7/3/1846
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