He had now become very homesick, and so, obtaining a boat, he set out during the fine season from the islands of Gomus (Pulo Bras) and Pulo-weh. "From here the furthermost of the Nicobars may be seen, and so one island may be seen from another, from the southernmost of those to Chitty-Andeman (Little Andaman), which is southernmost of the Andamans, distant from Acheen about a hundred leagues." Once home, and made much of by his relatives, who recognised him although he had long been considered dead, he acquainted them with his knowledge of God, "and would have persuaded his countrymen to learn of him how to adore God and to obey His laws, but he could make no converts."
After a month or so of the old life, he returned to Acheen with a quantity of quicksilver, which, he said, abounded in some of the Andamans; and thereafter he made several other voyages, always returning with a similar cargo. "Some Mohammedan faquirs would have accompanied him, but he would not suffer them, because, he said, he could not engage for their safety among his countrymen. When I saw him he was in company of a seid, whom I carried as a passenger to Surat, and from whom I had this account of his adventures."
Trustworthy history of the islands now begins; for, at the close of the eighteenth century, the Honourable East India Company sent small expeditions, under Colonel Colebrooke and Captain Blair, to report on the possibilities of the group. Their accounts were so satisfactory, that, in 1789, the latter was sent to establish a penal settlement in what was then called Port Cornwallis—now Port Blair.
All went well with Blair and his colony until 1792, when orders were received from Calcutta to transfer the whole establishment to the harbour in North Andaman, which, in turn, was to be known as Port Cornwallis. The first place of that name was henceforth for a time dubbed Old Harbour.
Colonel Syme, who was sent on a mission to Ava in 1795, visited the establishment on his voyage out, and found there a population of 700, including a company of sepoys. He estimated the aborigines at 2000 to 2500, and gives a very unflattering description of them. They then used rafts of bamboo in addition to canoes.[96]
The new settlement proved so unhealthy, that, after an existence of four years, its abandonment was decided on: the prisoners were transferred to Penang, and the troops returned to Bengal.[97]
For many years now, the group remained untenanted by a foreign element, and its isolation was broken only by the rendezvous at Port Cornwallis, in 1824, of the fleet carrying the army of Sir Archibald Campbell to Rangoon for the first Burmese war; by the murder, while ascertaining the mineral possibilities of the islands, of Dr Heifer, a Russian scientist employed by the H.E.I.C.; and by the simultaneous wrecks in 1844, on Sir John Lawrence Island, of the troopships Runnymede and Briton, which, in a hurricane one inky night, were flung, unknown to each other until morning dawned, right over the reef in among the trees of the jungle. Hardly a life was lost.
Before the Andamans again became the field of Government activity, the Cocos group, which lie 20 miles to the north of Great Andaman, were the scene of an unofficial attempt at colonisation.[98] The first settlers were two men on their way to Australia, who, struck with the beauty of the Great Coco, with its shore covered with innumerable coco palms and other trees, gave up their original plan, and were left there in the early part of 1849. There were no inhabitants; but the islands were frequented during the north-east monsoon by people from Tenasserim and Arakan, who came for the coconuts that were so plentiful. The only animals were rats; but the bays abounded with fish and turtle, and water was obtained by sinking wells in the beach.
In the middle of July, the Flying Fish—the ship that had landed the first settlers—brought a second batch from Moulmein, and the population then consisted of four men, two women, and four children, with a small number of Burmese and a few Lascars.
Some months passed, and the island remained unvisited; and the whole story of that time is one of incompetence, laziness, sickness, and starvation. Stores failed; while food procurable on the island only consisted of turtles, turtles' eggs, fish, and coconuts. The settlers were, besides, suffering from dysentery, fever, and other complaints, brought on by an unaccustomed mode of life, in dwellings that were mere hovels, and subjection to the inclemency of the rainy season. Their spirits became depressed, and despair succeeding discontent, they were more like an unfortunate shipwrecked party than immigrants who had landed to make a new home. Several of the colonists fell a prey to despondency, that in some cases amounted almost to mental derangement. Some of them died, and those who were rescued from that fate were brought away from the island in an utter state of destitution, emaciated in body and almost silly in intellect.