Identifier: transactionsofro88roya (find matches)
Title: Transactions of the Royal Society of New Zealand
Year: 1888 (1880s)
Authors: Royal Society of New Zealand
Subjects: Science
Publisher: Wellington, N.Z. : The Society
Contributing Library: Brigham Young University Hawaii, Joseph F. Smith Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Consortium of Church Libraries and Archives

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ssyriansculpture, having figures of single persons swimming across ariver, each with an inflated skin as a boat (Plate XXXVI.,fig. 3). To this day a similar habit of the dwellers in Asia maybe noticed. In the Journey to the Source of the Oxus, p. 64,we find, Early in the forenoon they repair to the river orcanal, and there, upon their mussuks (inflated hides), float andtalk till sunset. I have seen in one group a father and twochildren, the latter on dried elongated gourds, clinging to theirparent, who bestrode a good-sized mussuk. Close to themcame two grey-haired men, apparently hugging each other, forthey rode upon the same inflated skin, which, but for thecloseness with which they embraced it, would soon have parted * See Colebrook, Essays, vol. i., p. 1775; Wards Hindoos,vol. ii., pp. 62, 284, 331 (quoted by Tylor); Primitive Culture, vol. i.,427 : also Races of Mankind. f For similar Irish legend see ODonovans Irish Grammar, p. 440. Tim ^tplntfi f tt$titatet Vol. xxi. pi. xxxvi.
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XT.aat To Musi&U rafter ~hy ZTragear. Tregear.—Polynesian Knowledge of Cattle. 463 company. Next came sailing down an individual lying muchat his ease between the four legs of a huge buffalos hide,while boys moved in all directions, mounted as they could,some on gourds and some on skins. Thus, then, kau and vaha had passed from the animal toinflated hide. From this form, doubtless, men went on to thediscovery that the skin itself needed not to be inflated, butthat, if bound to a framework in the shape of a hemisphere, itwould buoy up the contents, if not buried above the water-line. Herodotus (Clio, 94) says, The most wonderful thingof all here, next to the city itself, is what I now proceed todescribe : Their vessels that sail down the river to Babylonare circular, and are made of leather. For, when they havecut the ribs out of willows that grow in Armenia aboveBabylon, they cover them with hides extended on the outsideby way of a bottom.::: Thus the idea has grown from thelivi

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