FISHING [N INDIAN WATERS. Til 



cultivate the soil ; but by far the larger number are kept in durance vile, 

 all their lives in immense prison buildings erected indifferent parts, and their 

 labour is utilized for the benefit of Government. 



The aborigines are unique. A negroid race utterly unlike the inhabitants 

 of the neighbouring countries^ their very existence is an ethnological puzzle. 

 Where they came from, and who and what they are, is a problem which has 

 not yet been satisfactorily solved. An adult male Andamanese stands from 

 4'-3'' to 4'-7" high and a female from 4'-0" to 4'-3". Though so small, they 

 are perfectly formed miniature men and women. The men are pleasant to 

 look upon, and very strong and muscular, but the women as a rule are 

 singularly ill-favoured. They live in small communities in the jungles, 

 exist almost entirely by the chase, and as hunters are extremely expert with 

 their primitive weapons ; while their dexterity with the bow and arrow both 

 on land and on the water, where they hunt, shoot, and spear the fish, is simply 

 incredible. Like most aboriginal savage races, since coming in contact with 

 a higher civilization, they have deteriorated physically, and are rapidly 

 dying out, and before very many years will probably have disappeared leav- 

 ing behind them absolutely no trace of their existence. There is one officer 

 of the settlement who has been placed specially in charge of them, and he is 

 devoting his whole life and energies to the task of recording their history, 

 and in future days his voluminous notes, his most excellent collection of 

 photographs, and his wonderful museum of their instruments, both of war 

 and of peace of all sorts, will be all that future students will have to enable 

 them to form an idea of what this most interesting and curious race was like. 

 The headquarters of the settlement are on Eoss Island, better known 

 perhaps as Port Blair, and there are also considerable settlements at Aber- 

 deen and Viper Islands, and also at Port Mowatt and Hope Town, This 

 latter place was the scene of the assassination of the then Viceroy of India, 

 Lord Mayo, who met his death at the hands of a fanatic Mussulman convict 

 in 1872, There is a small pier or landing stage here, and it is the landing 

 place for and on the way to Mount Harriet, the Government Sanatorium, 

 It was here on returning from a visit to Mount Harriet, that the tragedy took 

 place. As a fishing resort it is, however, that I would draw your attention 

 to it, and from this point of view it is unsurpassed. As in the case of Bombay 

 and Aden, in each of which places, as I have before noted, one fish is found 

 to engross the Angler's attention, so here is it much the same. However 

 good the general fishing may be, and very often is, either with the mullet, 

 garfish, seer, barraconta, and horse mackerel, still the mainstay of the fishing 

 and the fish for which the angler generally looks, is what is locally known 

 as " Khokhari." 



Cavanx carangus and C. malahariciis are the two species which are common- 

 est and most often got, but there are altogether nearly thirty sorts of Caranx 

 and sometimes one may come across others of the genus than those named 



