a broad-beamed punt, and is ordinarily of sufficient length and breadth to take a cart and its bullocks. The bigger river ferry-boats are large flats which will hold three or four carts with their bullocks. Long boats are used at some of the lesser ferries, and rafts laid on hollowed-out palmyra trunks (called sangadis) at a few insignificant ones. The round boats made of hides stretched over a bamboo framework which are used on some of the rivers of the Presidency (e.g., the Tungabhadra, Cauvery and Bhaváni) are not employed in this district. Across narrow waterways the boats are propelled by poles, or, more rarely, are pulled across with the help of a rope tied from bank to bank. For crossing the wider and deeper channels, oars or (as sometimes on the Gódávari itself) sails are used.
Thirty-four of the local fund ferries are leased out by auction by the taluk boards concerned to contractors, who are allowed to charge certain fixed fees. In 1904-05 the sums paid for the right to work these ferries amounted in round figures to Rs. 23,300. The eight ferries of Bhadráchalam fetched some Rs. 700 in the same year. The ferry across the Vasishta Gódávari at Kótipalli was leased for Rs. 4,020 and that across the Vainatéyam at Bódasakurru for Rs. 2,300. All the steam ferries were sold for large amounts.
All the other local fund ferries are allowed to be used by the public free of charge. They are managed by the villagers, who arrange for some one to work each of them and remunerate him themselves. For some of them the boat or ballacut is supplied by the District Board, and in that case the village headman is held responsible for its proper treatment.
The Gódávari river is largely used as a waterway. The three steam ferry-boats mentioned above do much passenger traffic. One of them, a stern-wheel boat with compound engines, plies between Rájavólu (Rázóle) and Narasapur; another, a large boat with an upper deck, of the usual river-steamer type, travels between Rajahmundry, Dowlaishweram, Bobbarlanka, Vijésvaram and Kovvúr; and the third, another stern-wheeler, touches at all the ferry stations on both sides of the Gódávari between Rajahmundry and Pólavaram and has recently been run experimentally as far up as Kunnavaram, to provide communication with Bhadráchalam1[1] These boats are worked by crews paid by the District Board, but are generally managed by contractors who find the fuel, etc.,
- ↑ 1 These are Kovvúr, Arikarevala, Kumáradévam, Tállapúdi, Sitánagaram and Gútála,
