Sinbad the sailor died long ago but the sea he sailed is still called the
Persian Gulf and is just as full of curious islands as it was in his time.
The boats are also just like Sinbad's and the sailors sing the same songs,
I think, for there are very few changes in the almost changeless East. The
Bahrein harbour-boat is built on the islands, out of timber from India and
masts from Ceylon. But the sailcloth and the ropes are made on this our
island home. All boats of this kind carry a good lot of passengers, draw
very little water and are fast sailing craft; so that even the American
boy whose father owns a yacht would not speak with contempt of one of
these boats. In fact I have heard English sea captains who had drunk salt
water for years say that they never saw better harbour boats in a storm
than these of Bahrein.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
The Arab carpenter uses no bench or vise; he squats upon the ground in the
shade of some old building or tree and carries all his tools in a small
basket with him. He has four hands instead of the two hands of an American
carpenter, for his feet are bare and he can work as well with his toes as
you can with your fingers. It is wonderful to see how an Arab carpenter
can hold a board with his toes while his hands are busy sawing or planing
it!
I never see one of these carpenters using his toes so cleverly without
thinking that we who wear shoes and stockings and only use our feet for
walking have lost one of the powers that the Arabs still possess. A
carpenter's handsome handiwork in Arabia should be called his _toe_some
_toey_-work; don't you think so? In the picture at the end of this chapter
you see an Arab carpenter's tools. His saw is exactly opposite to an
ordinary saw as the teeth all point the wrong way! But you know he _pulls_
the tool so it is all right. The plane has four handles instead of one.
The gimlet is like ours but instead of a brace and bit to make holes, the
Arab uses a fiddle-string stretched on a bow which he twists once or
twice around his borer, or auger-bit. Then he fiddles away until he has
made a hole.
[Illustration: SAWING A BEAM.]
It is very strange to see two Arab carpenters sawing a beam as you find
them in the picture.
Time is not valuable in the East because the days are long and life is
easy and the people are never in a hurry. Never do anything to-day that
can be done to-morrow is their motto. So they spend a half hour in fixing
the beam on a tripod; then they pull and push and push and pull the great
clumsy saw blade up and down and in an hour or so the beam is cut in two.
What would such carpenters say if they were to visit an American sawmill
and see the gang-saw cut six boards out of a log at once just as easy as
your mother cuts a cheese? Arabia and its carpenters are very far behind
us in civilisation. The whole country is in need of schools and industrial
missions so that the Arab boys may learn to handle tools and make
furniture and build houses.
[Illustration: AN ARAB CARPENTER'S TOOLS.]
In America there is hardly a boy living but he can drive a nail and saw
off a board and put up a shelf. In Arabia only carpenters' sons can do
these things; the ordinary boy does not even know how to use a jack-knife;
he never had one. A short definition of Arabia would be "a land without
tools." Ritter, the great geographer, calls Arabia "the anti-industrial
centre of the world," which is only the same definition in other words.