Epsom salts, turpentine, spirit of camphor, eau-de-Cologne, and peppermint, are also much-prized articles of barter, and bring a large profit, being exchanged for old clothes, salt meat, onions, and biscuit.
[10] Thus, for instance, there occurred in one of these documents:—"In the village of Aurong, or Arrow, the best anchorage is opposite Capt. Marshall's hut, in from 13 to 15 fathoms water. At many points the coast is so dangerous, that one ship lost two of her men, who were endeavouring to land in a boat." In another certificate it was announced that the barque Batavia of Rotterdam, freighted with rice, of 442 tons burthen, while on her voyage from Rangoon to Europe, was wrecked in Danson's passage, 7th April, 1857, and her crew was very hospitably treated by the natives of Kar-Nicobar. Almost every one of these certificates concludes with the remark that whoever wishes to be on friendly terms with the natives must play no pranks with their women, nor shoot their fowls or hogs in the forest.
[11] This place of interment is situated close to a small village on the north-east side of the island, where the graves are visible in the shape of a number of round stakes sunk about three or four feet into the earth, which are adorned with all sorts of variegated cloths and ribbons.
[12] It is customary to call the liquid contents of the green, unripe cocoa-nut by the name of cocoa-nut milk; but it is rather a clear, delightfully palatable water, which neither in colour nor taste at all resembles milk. This is obtained or pressed from the white, sweet, rather hard kernel, which is itself extraordinarily nutritive, and forms the daily food of the inhabitants. For an entire month, during which we could procure neither cows' nor goats' milk, we experimented on the use of the fluid obtained from the ripe cocoa-nut in our tea and coffee, and found it so excellent that we hardly felt the privation of animal milk.
[13] See Vol. I., p. 240.
[14] This vocabulary, which probably will not be found altogether valueless for the purposes of comparative philology, as also for the assistance of future travellers, will appear at the end of this volume as an Appendix.
[15] See Appendix.
[16] Most of the Austrian sailors are from the Adriatic coast, and accordingly speak an Italian patois.
[17] "Letters on the Nicobar Islands, etc. Addressed by the Rev. I. Gottfried Hänsel, the only surviving missionary, to the Rev. C. J. Latrobe. London, 1812." We are indebted for these rare pamphlets to the kindness of Dr. Rosen of the community of the Moravian Brethren at Genaadendal in South Africa, and do not think, despite its deep interest in the history of missions, that it has ever been translated into another language. Brown in his "History of Missions" has made a few brief extracts from it.
[18] "If an inhabitant of the South Sea Islands have planted during his life but ten bread-fruit trees," says Cook, "he has fulfilled his duties towards his own and his grand-children as fully and effectually as the denizen of our rougher clime, who during his life-long endures the severity of winter, and exhausts his energies in the heats of summer, in order to provide his household with bread, and to save up some trifle for his family to inherit."