Picture this: Travel on the Hwang Ho, which we know as the Yellow River in China, was mostly accomplished in 1932 and for the previous 2,000 years, on home-made rafts using sheepskins for flotation. W. Robert Moore describes the process in Raft Life on the Hwang Ho, National Geographic Magazine, June, 1932. "It is a long, breath-taking task to inflate all of the sheepskins, even on this small raft. Some of the larger freight rafts, however, have as many as 500 skins bound together" (photo caption, p. 745).
At that time, there were no dams on the river. The many rapids were extremely dangerous to navigate and required great skill to steer. "Whenever one of the sheepskins is torn in going through the rapids or grounding on sand bars, the hole is sewed up and the hide reinflated. Skins can be used three seasons" (photo caption, p 747).
The skins are inflated by one man blowing through an opening in the end of one leg of a sheepskin. What a strange sight! Many skins are stuffed with wool to bypass taxes on transporting wool. The skins are lashed together with wood strips.
The Hwang Ho River "is the second largest river in China. . . all along its 2,500 mile path to the sea, it is not navigable for steamships or other deep-draft craft. It is alternatively either too swift and broken by turbulent rapids or widens and becomes too shallow and filled with sand bars to allow the use of large boats" (p 742). Isn't the Chinese invention amazing!
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