KELLEK, ARAB., is a raft in use on the Tigris and Euphrates, nearly as long as it is broad. It is composed of goat-skins blown up, and fastened close together by reeds ; this is strengthened by crosspieces of wood, and over these again are laid others to keep the bales of merchandise out of the water. The only fastenings of this raft are twigs. The skins are repaired and inflated afresh every evening, and during the day care is taken to keep them continually wet, which prevents their bursting. Those used by the Yezdi ferrymen on the Zab rivers, as described by Niebuhr, are composed of 32 bladder-shaped sheepskins, inflated with air ; four of these are placed lengthways and eight in breadth, and on the oblong square thus formed a covering of planks is formed. The Kellek rafts are conducted by two long oars, the blades of which are made of pieces of split cane fastened together. The passengers arrange themselves as they can on the bales of goods ; and if a person wish to be very much at his ease, he procures a wooden bedstead covered over with a felt awning, which stands in the middle of the kellek, and serves for a bed by night and a sitting-room by day. he historians ff, t of Alexander mention that the ra s on which that hero crossed the rivers of Central Asia were buoyed up with skins stuffed with straw ; they were then, no doubt, as now, inflated with air ; and it is thus that the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Karun, the Indus, the Oxus, and other rivers' in Asia are crossed. Besides the Kellek or..aft, tii•-•
Kufa or Gufa, a round-ribbed boat or coracle, is used on the Tigris and Euphrates, covered, not with skin, but bitumen. But of this the only valuable article is the bitumen ; the ribs are of thin willow rods or the midrib of the frond of the date tree, and are useless if the boat be broken up. The .rivers of the Peninsula of India, the Kistna, and Tumbudra are usually crossed in basket boats or coracles, with a framework of rattan covered on the outside with skins. But a single inflated skin, such as are used as buoys for •nets on the east coast of Scotland, or a dried pumpkin, or a bundle of dry rushes, is used by individual travellers. On the Godavery, near the delta, a small double canoe is in use, the passenger sitting astride the connecting beam. The strata of rushes are evidently of the same kind as the vessels of bulrushes upon the water, alluded to in Isaiah xviii. 2. This peculiar mode of navi gating that river is the same as was known to the ancients as the Navigia Conacia.—Rich's Kurdi stan, ii. p. 128 ; J071111. p. 429 ; Miguan's 7'2.. pp. 23, 423.