A man using a raft of inflated skins to navigate the River Tigris. Wood engraving.

"Occasionally, while steaming along, we would pass some Arabs crossing the river on inflated sheep or goat skins; the most primitive, one would think, of all methods of voyaging. On these, Arabs, male and female, with their burdens commit themselves to the perils of crossing the broad and rapid waters of the Tigris; the women even carrying bowls of milk this way. The next step in the art of river navigation, is the using of two goats' skins attached to one another by means of a hoop; then comes a species of raft called a "kelek," which can be made of any number of goat-skins ranging between four and two hundred. These skins are taken off with as few incisions as possible, and then dried and prepared, after which the air is forced in by the lungs, and the aperture tied up with string. Four such skins being attached by means of withes of willow or tamarisk, there is placed over them a kind of platform consisting of branches in layers at right angles to one another, and reaching from side to side. This constitutes the smallest kind of "kelek," on which may be seen an Arab family moving with the stream from one pasture ground to another, and carrying their bags of corn and worldly effects."--Bates, op. cit. p. 166