Captain John Davis, of Arctic fame, the inventor of the "back-staff," the earliest form of quadrant, piloted a Dutch ship to the East Indies, and touched, in 1599, at the Central Nicobars. He wrote that "... the people brought in great store of hens, oranges, lemons, and other fruit, and some ambergris which we bought for pieces of linen cloth and table napkins. These isles are pleasant and fruitful, lowland, and have good road for ships. The people are most base, only living upon fruits and fish, not manuring the ground, and therefore having no rice."[119]
During the reign of Elizabeth, Sir James Lancaster made several voyages to the East Indies, and touched at the Nicobars. Two of his officers, Barker and May, have chronicled a visit to the islands in 1592, in a description that would apply more accurately to the Pulo Wai group. "The islands of Nicobar," says Barker, "we found inhabited with Moors, and after we came to an anchor, the people came aboard us in their canoes with hens, cocos, plantains, and other fruits, and in two days they brought to us royals of plate, giving us them for calicut cloth, which royals they find by diving for them in the sea, which were lost not long before by two Portugal ships which were bound for China and were cast away there. They call in their language the coco, calambe (Malay, klapa); the plantain, pison (Mal., pisang); a hen, iam (Mal., ayam); a fish, iccan (Mal., ikan); and a hog, babi (Mal., babi)"; and May, the other writer, says that the natives were in religion Mohammedans.
Lancaster's own account of the "Islands of Nicobar" is more interesting, and is based on his experiences there in 1602. Of either Pulo Milo or Kondul he writes:—
"Here we had fresh water and some coconuts, other refreshing had we none. Yet the people came aboard our ships in long canoes which would hold twenty men in one of them, and brought gums to sell instead of amber, and therewithal deceived divers of our men: for these people of the east are wholly given to deceit. They brought us hens and coconuts to sell, but held them very dear, so that we bought few of them. We stayed here ten days....
"We were forced to go to the island of Sombrero (the Portuguese name for Chaura) some 10 or 12 leagues to the northward of Little Nicobar. Here we lost an anchor, for the ground is foul and groweth full of counterfeit coral and some rocks, which cut our cable asunder.
"The people of these islands go naked, having only the privities bound up in a piece of linen cloth, which cometh about their middles like a girdle and so between their twist. They are all of a tawny colour, and anoint their faces with divers colours: they are well limbed, but very fearful: for none of them would come aboard our ships, or enter our boats.
"The General reported that he had seen some of their priests all apparelled, but close to their bodies, as if they had been sewed in it; and upon their heads a pair of horns turning backwards (tá-chökla), with their faces painted green, black, and yellow, and their horns also painted the same colour. And behind them, upon their buttocks, a tail hanging down very much like in the manner as in some painted clothes we paint the devil in our country. He demanding wherefore they went in that attire, answer was made him, that in such form the devil appeared to them in their sacrifices, and therefore the priests, his servants, were so apparelled. In this island grow trees which for their tallness, greatness, and straightness will serve the biggest ships in all our fleet for a mainmast, and the island is full of these trees." This description of the island cannot be said to be applicable at the present day.
"Here likewise we found upon the sand by the seaside a small twig (Virgularia mirabilis?) growing up to a grand tree, and offering to pluck the same, it shrunk down into the ground, and sinketh unless you hold very hard. And being plucked up, a great worm is at the root of it: and look how the tree groweth in greatness the worm diminisheth. Now as soon as the worm is wholly turned into the tree it rooteth in the ground, and so groweth to be great. This transformation is one of the strangest wonders I saw in all my travels. For the tree being plucked up little, the leaves stripped off, and the pill by that time it was dry, turned into an hard stone, much like to white coral; so that the worm was twice transformed with different natures: of these we gathered and brought home many."[120]
Towards the middle of the century, Koeping, a Swede, touched at one of the islands in a Dutch vessel and thought he perceived men with tails, "like those of cats, which they move in the same manner," but he was deceived by the peculiar clothing. He further credits the Nicobarese with cannibalism, for a boat's crew of five men that went ashore never returned, but next day their bones were found strewn over the beach![121] Next, Dampier was put ashore by the privateer he piloted on the N. W. coast of Great Nicobar, and after a short sojourn left with his companions in a native canoe, and succeeded in reaching Sumatra.