CARGO BOATS, BAHREIN.
In another kind of boat the pearl-divers of the Gulf go out to their hard toil and costly labour. One of them costs about four hundred rupees, that is about one hundred and thirty dollars. You do not think that is dear, do you, for a boat that holds a crew of twenty? But the cost of diving for pearls is not in the boat or the apparatus; it costs lives. Many of the divers are eaten by sharks before they return with the year's pearl harvest; others lose limbs and health. I wish you could see the odd shaped oars the Arabs use in these boats. They consist of a round pole with a sort of barrel-head or spoon shaped board tied to one end. The boat builders always use twine and rope rather than nails or screws to put their boats together. The boys of Bahrein can make beautiful sailing boats to play with out of bits of date-stick and strings.
RIVER BOAT, BUSRAH.
Each fishing boat has a sort of figure-head and this is generally covered with the skin of a sheep or goat. This animal is sacrificed on the day when the boat is first launched, just as we give the boat a name and put flags on it. It is a very old custom to offer a blood sacrifice when a boat is first put into the water.
Not only in the villages on the coasts of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf are there boat builders and sailors; Arabia has two large rivers that help to make its northern boundary and they are highways of traffic.
Our picture shows a river boat on the canal at Busrah. It goes the long journey from Busrah to Bagdad over five hundred miles or even to Hillah and the other towns on the Euphrates river. This kind of boat has a cabin in the bow and can carry a large cargo of wheat or wool. It sails by all the interesting country which was once the home of Abraham and is still called Mesopotamia.
The largest boats used by the Arabs are called dhows or buggalows. You will hear something more about these boats in the chapter on the slave trade.
The carpenters of Arabia, like the boat builders, work in a very old-fashioned way. But they are much less skillful in their work. You often see well-built boats but never a well-made door or a window that shuts properly. Perhaps the fault is with their tools and perhaps they are not as skillful as they once were in using them.