"Before leaving the village we bought some fowls, and a pair of young monkeys, said to be only three or four months old. They were imprisoned in a pig cage, and seemed half-starved, and were certainly very frightened as they sat clinging convulsively to each other.
"There is clear water, 300 or 400 yards wide, before Kópenhéat, with a reef on either side where the sea breaks heavily at high tide, but the anchorage is not so good as at Kunyi or Nyur."
CHAPTER XIV
GREAT NICOBAR—WEST AND SOUTH COASTS
"Domeat"—Malay Traders—Trade Prices—The Shom Peṅ Language—Place Names—Pulo Bábi—The growth of Land—Climbing a Palm Tree—Servitude—Population—Views on Marriage with the Aborigines—Towards the Interior—A Shom Peṅ Village—The Inhabitants—Canoe-building—Barter—The West Coast—South Bay—Walker Island—Chang-ngeh—Up the Galathea River—Water—We leave the Nicobars and sail to Sumatra.
We hove up anchor at 8 a.m.—the hour at which a breeze usually sprang up—and sailed for Pulo Bábi, a few miles down the coast, taking as passenger an old man named Domeat who had been staying at Kópenhéat.
He produced a number of chits for our perusal, and from one we learned that it was Domeat—now a toothless, but sturdy old gentleman, with nutcracker jaws and a benevolent expression—who brought news of the recovery of the body of Captain Elton, commander of the station gunboat, who was drowned in the surf while attempting to land at Trinkat Sambelong[80] village, on the east coast, in March 1881.
Most of the letters were written by Asiatics, and from them it seemed that the last Malay vessel to call at the islands arrived in 1877. Many formerly came to purchase coconuts, but this people, like our own nation, has been ousted from the trade by the inhabitants of China and the Indian Empire.