which, even could more time be devoted, would call for immense exertion. Our researches therefore were necessarily confined for the most part to the coast region.
After several hours of strolling about, collecting and examining as we went on, the naturalists found themselves collected once more on the open space facing Captain John's hut, where meanwhile a pig had been roasted by our sailors in the open air, which we had purchased for three shillings of our corpulent friend Dr. Crisp. The natives had at first protested against this improvised hearthstone, being apprehensive lest the fire should reach their huts, the roofs of which are thatched with dried palm-leaves. "It is as inflammable as gunpowder," remarked the old chief in an anxious tone, when our people had with great want of foresight lighted the fire too near the buildings. Captain John and his kindred did not need to be invited twice to partake of our meal, at which they proved themselves excellent trenchermen. The inhabitants of these islands generally eat vegetables only, the use of meat being for the most part restricted to festive occasions. The use of salt is as yet unknown to them. They only use sea-water for the purpose of seething their pigs and hens, by which process the flesh gets a slight flavour of salt. During our luncheon, which had made the natives yet more confiding than ever, we found an opportunity of hearing something about the various festivals of the Nicobar islanders.
When a native falls down from a tree, or is bitten by a
snake, or is otherwise wounded or dies, the Nicobarians forthwith discontinue all work, and institute a fast, which they term Uraka. With the commencement of the S.W. monsoons or rainy season (when the wind comes from "yonder," quoth Dr. Crisp, and pointed with his finger to the southward), the inhabitants of Kar-Nicobar hold their chief festival, which lasts fourteen days, and is called Oïlere.
They have a similar festival at the end of the damp season, or N.E. monsoon, to which the pigs, which play quite a conspicuous part in it, impart an entirely peculiar character. Several weeks before the commencement of this fête, a large number of these unclean but useful animals are confined in small stalls, whence they are released on the feast-day, and set loose in a well-fenced space, where they are teased and pricked with lances by all the courageous, or rather mischievous, youth of the island. The Nicobarians seem to attach special importance to the swine being driven wild, and themselves engaged in a regular struggle with the infuriated animal, in the course of which severe wounds are by no means of rare occurrence. We ourselves saw several young natives, who a few days previously had been severely injured in a similar contest with some enraged pigs. When this anything but æsthetic spectacle has lasted some time, the pigs are killed, roasted on the fire, and devoured by the combatants and spectators.
A not less strange and even more barbarous festival is that which is held about the same time as the one just mentioned.
This consists in exhuming the bones of all those who have died during the year elapsed since the last N.E. monsoon, and have been interred in a sort of cemetery called "Cuyucupa."[11] They next bring these bones into a hut, seat themselves in a circle around the ghastly mementos, and shriek and howl as at the day on which the relation died. While this scene of lamentation is going on, a lighted cigar is usually stuck into the bony mouth of the grisly skull, after which the latter is consigned to the grave again. The rest of the bones however are either thrown into the deep sea or hid far in the forest, while at the same moment, as a farther evidence of sorrow, a number of cocoa-palms are cut down, and their fruit scattered to the winds. By such symbols they apparently wish to express their overwhelming grief, their weariness of existence, and their indifference to the most valued gifts of nature, so that they would even deprive themselves of the most universally necessary of the means of subsistence—were it not that, owing to the readiness with which the sea-shore palm is propagated, the nuts thus scattered at random, in all the indifference to sublunary considerations incidental to a paroxysm of grief, speedily strike root, and after a few years lift up their heads again in the forest, at once ornamental and nutritious.
At all these festivals the natives assemble in the various villages, and at these seasons spend days and weeks with each other. Earlier visitors to Kar-Nicobar estimate the number of villages on the island at about six or seven only. The natives on the other hand gave us the names of the following thirteen: Arrong (or Arrow), Sáoui, Moose, Lapáte, Kinmai, Tapóimai, Chukchuitche, Kiukiuka, Tamalu, Páka, Malacca, Komios, and Kankéna, which all together would hardly number much above 100 huts, and about 800 or 900 inhabitants.
Southward of our anchorage we fell in with a small stream, which near its embouchure on the beach was lost in a sand-bank. Some of the members of the Expedition explored it in a very small flat-bottomed boat, a Venetian gondola, which was transported across the bar in order to admit of its being sculled up the river. At first it was found to be about 2 1⁄2 feet deep, by about 12 to 14 yards in width; the general direction of its very sinuous course being towards E.S.E. All around the forest presented a scene to which perhaps only the fantastic whimsicality of certain theatrical forest sceneries might furnish a dim resemblance. Along the steep bank of the river rose to a height of nearly 100 feet the slender Nibong palm, adorned with blossoms and clusters of fruit, and close adjoining the graceful Catechu palm. Gigantic forest trees, with thick squat trunks, extended their shady masses of foliage far over the stream; screw-pines towering up from the scaffold-like arrangement of their numerous roots, were reflected from