CHAPTER XI
LITTLE NICOBAR AND PULO MILO
A Tide-rip—Islets—A Cetacean—Pulo Milo—Timidity of the Natives—Little Nicobar—Geology—Flora—Population—Site for a Colony—Jungle Life—Banian Trees—The Houses and their Peculiarity—The Natives—Practices and Beliefs—The Shom Peṅ—The Harbour—We ascend a River—Kingfishers—Water—Caves—Bats and Swallows—Nests—A Jungle Path—Menchál Island—Collections—Monkeys—Crabs.
Sailing across the Sombrero Channel, some 30 miles wide, between Kachal and Little Nicobar, we passed the islet of Meroë. It is low-lying, and about 1 mile in length. A yellow beach separates the dark crown of jungle and coconuts from the sea, except at the southern end, which is slightly elevated and rocky.
On its western side, a tide-rip—to which the chart ascribes a strength of 5 knots an hour at times—caught us, and we were in some danger of being carried inshore, but that the breeze was just strong enough to bear the schooner safely past. The tides in the channel set strongly, and are said to attain in parts a velocity of as much as 5 knots at springs.
South of Meroë are the islets of Trak and Treis, and from the deck the red sandstone cliffs of the latter could be seen with much distinctness. Little Nicobar, rising 1400 feet, showed broken and hilly, completely covered with dense jungle, and beyond it Great Nicobar loomed faintly above the horizon.
During the afternoon, when in the vicinity of Meroë, we were somewhat excited by a glimpse at what was perchance a specimen of the killer whale (Orca gladiator). The first hint we obtained of the presence of such an animal, was conveyed by the sight of a long black fin showing above the water immediately in the course of the schooner.
As we sailed over the spot where it had been, we perceived, while looking over the side, a stout, rotund body of a deep black colour, marked with large patches of a yellowish hue about the head and the posterior portion of the back. Only a momentary glance was obtained before it faded from sight in deep water, but we judged it to be some 15 feet in length.
The dorsal fin distinctly differed in shape from that figured in descriptions of the killer; instead of being more or less triangular, it was sabre-like, long, narrow, and curved.[68]
We were all day journeying from Kachal to Little Nicobar, and had to anchor for the night somewhere west of Pulo Milo. As it became dark, immense flocks of pigeons left the forests of Little Nicobar for Trak and Treis, where they roosted for the night, and when day dawned we saw them passing back again. That morning, however, we made sail again, and reached our anchorage in a very short time.
The harbour is a fairly good one, and is formed by the coast of the island here bending to form a right angle, and by the island of Milo, which forms a protection on the west. Good shelter is afforded during the south-west monsoon—the most important consideration; and at other times only strong northerly winds need be feared.
We found 7 fathoms sand in the centre of the channel where we rounded to; and soon after the sails were down, three wild-looking fellows in black Chinese jackets came alongside, followed presently by a couple of old men clothed in red cotton.
For some unexplained reason, they seemed much afraid, and were with difficulty induced to believe that our intentions were nothing but good. From answers to questions, we learned that the people of Little Nicobar have nearly all died—a piece of information that one seems to obtain everywhere but in Kar Nicobar and Chaura. The name of the island they gave as Pulo Panjang (Malay=Long Island); it is called "Ong" in their own language; among themselves the Nicobarese do not employ the names familiar to us.[69]
Little Nicobar, the second largest island of the Archipelago, has an area of 58 square miles. It is broken up into hilly ranges, the highest summits being Mount Deoban, 1428 feet, near the centre of the island, and Empress Peak, 1420 feet, at the north-east corner.
The bed rock is a calcareous sandstone, easily disintegrated, and overlaid by a deep soil capable of sustaining a rich and varied vegetation. The hills are thickly wooded from base to summit, and there are no grassy spaces like those found on the northern islands.
The nature of the forest varies according to position and soil. In the beach forest, Pandanus larum and P. odoratissimus, Hibiscus tiliaceus, Barringtonia speciosa, Terminalia catappa, and Calophyllum inophyllum, are extremely plentiful; in the littoral forest of the level inlets, Mimusops littoralis, Calophyllum spectabile (canoe wood), and Eugenias, are the best represented species; while palms (Ptychoraphis augusta and Areca catechu) and cane-brakes are common in the moister parts. The high forest of the hills contains fine specimens of Terminalia procera, C. spectabile, Myristica irya, Artocarpus lakoocha, and Garcinia speciosa. No Dipterocarpus trees occur.
The population of Little Nicobar and Pulo Milo is 67: in fact, with the exception of Kondul, the inhabitants are fewer than those of any other island of the group. Its people speak, with some variations, the dialect of Nankauri: only for certain objects, and these, singular to say, of first necessity—coconuts, palms, pandanus, etc.—do they employ different expressions.[70] The same language is spoken by the people of Great Nicobar. According to Hamilton, they all partook, two hundred years ago, of the unpolished nature of their mountainous islands, and were more uncivil and surly than those of the northward!
Should the group again receive a European settlement, I know of no spot more suited to the purpose than this: in accommodation for shipping only is it excelled by the splendid harbour at Nankauri; in all else it is far superior—in the formation and greater area of ground, in fertility of soil, and in the presence of water.
We landed first on Little Nicobar near some ruined huts which once formed the village of Makachiaṅ, deserted since 1898, when the few remaining people either died or removed elsewhere; and after passing through a belt of coco palms, found ourselves in the jungle.
Much of the surface was level; but here and there little chains of sandstone hills, rising two or three hundred feet, wound about. The trees were of immense height, and in many places beneath them one moved about as freely as in an English forest.
Although this open vegetation is much more pleasant to traverse, it is not half so satisfactory for collecting purposes as the denser jungle, for it contains far less, both in variety and numbers, of birds and animals.
Megapodes, singly, in pairs, or in little flocks, ran about and sought busily for food, calling to each other meanwhile, until, alarmed by the sight of such unwonted intruders as white men, they scurried swiftly away. Overhead, so high as to be almost out of shot, pigeons, grackles, and parrots fluttered and cried, while, running up and down the branches, we saw, for the first time, the Nicobar tupai or tree-shrew, a little insectivorous animal, which, at a casual glance, might be taken for a squirrel. They were very common; but, unlike their representatives in the Malay Peninsula, etc., which are ground animals, we saw them only in the trees.[71]
It was soon evident that we had no cause to regret not having obtained more monkeys at Kachal, for here they abounded; and after discovering how common they were we would cold-bloodedly arrange every morning as to who should murder the specimen for the day.
Here a new bird was added to the islands' fauna (and to science) in the shape of a little Rhinomyias, quietly clothed in dull-brown plumage, which frequented the undergrowth of dense jungle and possessed a rather sweet note.
A momentary glance of a pitta gave for a few days (until we obtained a series of specimens) a fresh zest to collecting; this bird also was hitherto unrecorded from the locality, and proved to be a new species, although closely resembling P. cucullata.
A short distance from the shore, some immense banian trees grew so high that the pigeons and parrots which swarmed in their branches for the fruit were often completely beyond reach of the gun. The trees possessed, moreover, some wonderful aëreal roots (70 feet high), and, standing on the edge of an open space within the jungle, offered an opportunity for photography too good to be passed by. While the plate was being exposed—an operation of some minutes—a diminutive pig, bearing a striking resemblance to the Andaman species, trotted out from the surrounding foliage and leisurely inspected the camera. It was the first of the kind we had seen, and I had to reproach myself with leaving my gun at the boat.
FIG TREE WITH AËREAL ROOTS, LITTLE NICOBAR.
Pulo Milo is only about half a square mile in area, but is thickly covered with a growth of pandanus and coconut trees and jungle, above which hundreds of tall slim palms have forced their heads.
The little village of four houses lies on its eastern shore, fronted by a coral-reef that offers but little impediment to a landing-party: one tall pole, with bunches of palm leaf, stood on the beach—the last we met with.
The houses were all of quadrangular form, but with a peculiar feature about the roofs; for the slope from apex to eaves, instead of being straight, was in some markedly rounded, and in others the curve ran unbrokenly across the top from edge to edge. They were thatched with the leaves of the nipah palm, and the side walls, 2 to 4 feet in height, were built of rough-hewn planks laid horizontally, or of slabs of bamboo split and flattened out. The doors were closed by chicks of palm leaf, which in the daytime were propped out to shade the interior from the sun.
The natives soon overcame their distrust of us, and one evening "Shongshire," the headman, and others from the village, came on board. The former was a stately old gentleman, in spite of his top-hat, and somewhat resembled our old acquaintance, "Friend of England." With him was another old man of a most vivacious temperament, who gave us information in a very graphic manner as we all sprawled, chatting, on the cabin roof.
"There were only about a dozen people in the harbour," he said, "although in his boyhood many lived there; all however, were now dead from sickness and the 'orang bubu.' The former, he believed, was caused by eating turtle, and a kind of large fish that appeared near the shore at that period. The latter (apparently) were evil spirits that eat men, and are let loose by a wizard."[72]
Although the belief in evil spirits is quite as strong as in the central group, there is a great falling-off both in the elaboration and in the abundance of the instruments employed in exorcising them. In none of the houses was there either a large figure or a picture, or more than one or two of those minor charms which are met with in such abundance at Nankauri, while outside the dwellings the only representative of the signs and warnings to demon trespassers to "Keep off the grass," so numerous in that place, was a rudely-carved post daubed with paint.
The dead here, once buried, are left to rest in peace, and the somewhat loathsome process of digging up and cleaning the bones is not gone through.
It is probable that all this is a case of desuetude rather than the original absence of custom, and that such decay of ceremonial is due to the little value of public opinion, which is of no weight now that the population is so small. Taking into account that such religious accessories as they do possess, and that similar articles in Great Nicobar, together with the architectural type, etc., occur also at Nankauri, it is to be inferred that there was a time when these people in no way differed in observances from the inhabitants of that locality, who still retain in full the paraphernalia by which they outwardly mark the practice and maintenance of their superstitions.
Concerning the Shom Peṅ, we heard that though resembling the Nicobarese in appearance, they use a different language.
They are fairly numerous, and those living near the shore are on friendly terms with the coast people, bartering jungle produce and rattans. It is not wise, however, to go into the interior of Great Nicobar, as the wild men (orang utan) will murder strangers for the sake of their clothes and ornaments. They themselves are clothed in bark apparel. Their houses are either light shelters, the materials of which they carry about in their journeys, fitted with bunks one above the other, beneath the lowest of which a small fire smoulders; or are of a more substantial construction, with a fence[73] surrounding each house cluster.
HOUSES, PULO MILO.
In shape, Pulo Panjang is roughly a parallelogram, but its north-west side is somewhat eaten away; and the bay thus formed makes, together with Pulo Milo, a most effective harbour.
At the apex of this is a small secondary bay, where a little river, rising in the hills inland, debouches through a broad belt of mangroves. The salt-water basin, although partially choked with coral, would, in the event of settlement, serve well as a small boat harbour.
We ascended the stream several times in search of the big storkbilled kingfisher (Pelargopsis leucocephala), which, strangely, occurs again in Borneo, and at no spot between that island and the Nicobars; the case of the megapode is exactly parallel.
The river at first ran through a forest of young, but lofty, mangroves (Bruguiera gymnorhiza), whose straight stems, leaning towards each other across the stream, bore a certain resemblance to an assemblage of scaffold-poles. At length, when the land became less swampy, they gave place to a fringe of nipah or attap palms, the fruit of which looks like an exaggerated pine cone, and is sometimes eaten by Malays, while from the tender inner shoot, the same people obtain a wrapper for their cigarettes.[74]
Finally, where the banks became dry and solid, they were overgrown by luxuriant jungle—a mixture of forest trees, bamboos, palms and rattans, with here and there bordering the stream, a many-footed, white-skinned pandanus, and often a beautiful tree fern (Alsophila albasetecea), that immediately brought to my mind the blue hills and equally lovely valleys of New Zealand.
The stream, although maintaining a depth of 5 to 10 feet, at length became very narrow, and we were compelled, in order to proceed, to chop away the network of vegetation that overhung the water. Now and again it ran through open spaces covered with tall and matted grass, and then between banks a dozen feet high; but when we were forced to stop, unable to proceed further, the water was still brackish, although we had almost reached the hills in which it takes its source. The banks were frequented by herons, redshanks and other waders, and kingfishers (both P. leucocephala, with sandy head and body and blue wings, and the tiny bengalensis, the counterpart of our English bird). Several beautiful butterflies were seen, a rather common species, with velvety black wings, blotched with turquoise, constantly flitting up and down the course of the stream.
We obtained good water in the harbour; slightly to the west of the little bay, a rocky hill makes an angle with a little beach of bright sand, and at the point of junction a path leads to the spring a few yards inland, where, in the jungle, the trickling water runs down a face of black rock, and collects in a stony basin. By forming a slight dam at the foot of the rock, any quantity can be collected.
In the rocky hill just mentioned, we discovered several caves, which run inwards from mouths situated at the water's level. These are the homes of thousands of tiny leaf-nosed bats (Hipposideros nicobarulæ, sp. nov.), and immense numbers of the bird's-nest swift (Collocalia linchii).
The largest of these caves is about 50 feet deep, and 20 feet high at the entrance; but at the back the accumulation of guano is so great that there is barely room to stand. As we entered with a lantern, our feet sinking ankle-deep into the soft chocolate-coloured floor, there was a continual rush of little bats and birds overhead as they sought to escape, and with a leafy branch we knocked over a number of each kind before going to the end.
JUNGLE VEGETATION, LITTLE NICOBAR.
The rock at the back was covered with countless numbers of the shallow cup-shaped nests of saliva-gummed moss: so closely were they built, that in many cases one could not place a fingertip on the rock between them, and often they were constructed one on the side of the other. Nearly every one contained two comparatively large, white eggs, or ugly, unfledged nestlings. Fortunately for the birds, they are builders of the green variety of nest; for had these been white, they would not long have remained undisturbed by the Chinese.
Swifts and bats—the one as graceful as the other is hideous—would seem queer neighbours, although there is a certain affinity between the two, for both enjoy the same food—flies and other insects—and obtain it on the wing without mutual interference; for the first hunt by day, and the others are nocturnal. In the cave, the swallows breed at the inner end, while the bats congregate near the mouth.
Another small cave was inhabited by bats only, and so thickly were they suspended from the walls, that one could kill a dozen at one blow. For long after we left the spot, clouds of swifts whirled about the entrance; but the bats, when disturbed, immediately disappeared in the jungle above.
The only path on Little Nicobar runs across its northern peninsula. It starts near a couple of dilapidated huts opposite Pulo Milo, and, running first through a belt of tangled scrub, crosses the little range of hills near the western coast, and then, traversing a stretch of rich flat soil, covered with splendid open forest, and great numbers of the Nicobar palm (P. augusta), finally comes out on the east coast opposite the small island of Menchál, which lies a mile or so distant, and is only half a square mile in area. It is covered with forest, containing many coco palms and tree ferns, and also clumps of two species of giant bamboo (Bambusa brandisii and Gigantochloa macrostachya). It is of sandstone formation, covered with deep soil or sharply-worn coral. Somewhat farther down the coast is a small village, and the path has been made to connect this with Pulo Milo.
The forest through which the path ran was our favourite collecting ground. We met there for the first time the beautiful little sunbird Aethopyga nicobarica, with crown and tail dark shining blue, throat and breast scarlet, through which ran two moustachial streaks of brilliant blue, the remaining plumage olive grey, but further ornamented by patches of bright yellow beneath the wing and on the back. This is the male, for the hen bird, as in all sunbirds, is of very inconspicuous plumage. This species is very local in distribution, and does not occur in the northern islands.
Astur soloensis, the forest hawk, was not uncommon, but took pains to obtain, for it was very wary. Before beginning to call, one had to hide in a bush, or behind a tree trunk, and the chances were that when the bird did arrive it would perch behind you, and then, since its swooping flight is perfectly noiseless, one remained in ignorance of its proximity. Then, too, it might rest five yards away or fifty: in the former case, if you were not prepared with a suitable cartridge, the bird was lost, for there would be no time to reload; in the latter event, it was better to knock it over straightway than run risks in bringing it closer. Once they become frightened, or see what is making the call, they are off, not to return, "charm you never so wisely."
A parrot—Palæornis caniceps—restricted entirely to the two southern islands of the Nicobars, was very common about here, where its screams and chattering often broke the prevailing silence of the jungle. For such a bird, it was clad in sober colours; for, saving a grey head, across the front of which—like a pair of spectacles—there ran a patch of black feathers, the plumage was of green only. The whole scheme was somewhat relieved in the male by an upper mandible of scarlet.
Monkeys abounded, and on some days we might see as many as fifty or a hundred. They are so numerous that in both Little and Great Nicobar the coco palms, except in the neighbourhood of villages, are altogether unproductive, and this, according to the natives, is because the monkeys screw off every nut the moment it begins to form.[75]
They, too, are very timid in some ways, but one is able to get at them through their intense curiosity. The attempt to stalk a herd of these animals is often a futile proceeding; but if, when you have seen them, you keep quite still, and attract their attention by some unusual noise, such as a continued tapping on your gun-barrel, you will generally have them all round you in a very short time.
The effect, on the monkey, of man's appearance, is most interesting. The expression of their emotions is certainly almost human, as they sit and stare at him, coughing and snarling with anger and contempt, drawing back their heads and throwing the hand before the face with a gesture of abhorrence, and other movements indicative of shocked and outraged feelings. But predominant is the expression of absolute horror, which, coming from those we consider our still degraded cousins, is to our superiority very aggravating.
A troop of monkeys travelling through the forest and feeding as they move, is also worth watching. Their presence is plainly indicated, even when some distance off, by the crashing noise made as they leap from tree to tree. Having reached the extremity of one branch, the monkey, with a swing and a flying leap, conveys himself to another, not alighting as a rule on a bough of any size, but generally coming down on all fours amongst the small twigs, a bunch of which is immediately embraced.
In their manner of feeding they show a perpetual craving for change, the most fruitful tree not detaining them for many moments; while for each fruit from which a single bite is taken, half a dozen are plucked and thrown down.
Crabs swarmed nearly everywhere: scarlet hermits, that dragged about their variously-shaped domiciles in which they shut themselves up and lay inert when disturbed; and the hideous, purplish land-crabs, that scrambled away waving threatening claws at sight of a stranger. So numerous and rapacious were all these, that a week's assiduous trapping for mammals only produced one specimen, since the baits were always immediately discovered and devoured by the unwelcome and valueless crustacean.
Before we left, a number of men from Great Nicobar arrived in a large canoe: they were proceeding to Nankauri on one of the expeditions undertaken by the Nicobarese when they desire to obtain the pottery manufactured only by the women of Chaura.
We weighed anchor at sunrise on March 4th, having added a pitta, an owl, and the Rhinomyias—all new species—to the avifauna of the islands during a most satisfactory visit of seven days.