OUR VISIT TO THE NICOBARS 



Bj H. VOLS0E 



We arrived on deck on Sunday morning, May 6th, 1951, to find the 

 Galathea lying at anchor in a most beautiful natural harbour. The air 

 was calm and mild, the sea like a mirror; and surrounding the harbour 

 on all sides were wooded hills, broken here and there by bright-green 

 patches of grass. Small bays along the coast were fringed with glistening 

 white sand, and the slender trunks of palm-trees overhung the shore. 



A few days before, we had left sweltering, dusty, and smelly Calcutta 

 with its teeming and half-starved multitudes. The reek of temple incense 

 and the stench from funeral pyres still clung to our nostrils. It was like 

 waking up to find ourselves transported from Inferno into Paradise. We 

 were bound for Singapore and were about half way across, at the Nico- 

 bars, the small group of islands which with the Andamans further north 

 form a festoon of small islands linking up the northern tip of Sumatra 

 with Burma. The heavy swell of the Indian Ocean breaks against the 



