![Morris Strange Vessels](/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2024-06/Morris%20Strange%20Vessels.jpg?itok=ALt6yL7X)
Now the clue here was pretty obvious if you knew the other two, but it was the item that these two men are crossing the water in, and that is a Basket.
The card tells us that this "circular wicker basket holding two persons" is used along the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris, as well as in Egypt, presumably on the Nile. On the Euphrates it is known as a Kuphar, with regional variations, and, on the Tigris, as a Kufa. And they are still used to this day.
Some collectors count this as but part of a larger set, that they call "General Interest", though that name does not appear on the cards at all, whilst other collectors think each set of six cards is separate, and titled in the way that it does appear on the cards. Sadly we will never know the truth as to this, they are way too old to appear in any new issues reports in cartophilic magazines, and there never was a reference book on the works of B. Morris.
The cards are listed in our original World Tobacco Issues Index, but in a way to please both camps, as :
GENERAL INTEREST SERIES (A) Sm. 67 x 37. Unnd. Series of 30, in 5 sub-series. See H.280. ... M142-11
1. "Agriculture in the Orient" (6)
2. "Architectural Monuments" (6)
3. "The Ice Breaker" (6)
4. "Schools in Foreign Countries" (6)
5. "Strange Vessels" (6)
The titles in bold are links, but note that the "Architectural Monuments is a newsletter link, so you must scroll down - to Thursday 8 December 2022.
H.280, by the way, is a Handbook code, and it lists the cards in each set - so I will add that to the ever growing scanning list.
This text is identical in our updated version, but the "M" code has changed.