2 Voyage of the Novara. 



voyages to Southern China, landed on these islands, then 

 known as Megabalu and Legabalu, on the first occasion in 

 851, and on the second in 877 of the Christian era. Abu- 

 Zeyd-Hassan, one of these adventurers, gave a circumstantial 

 account of these voyages, which has been translated into 

 French, and published by Eusebius Renaudot.* 



After the Cape of Good Hope was doubled in 1497, the 

 Nicobars were chiefly frequented by voyagers in East Indian 

 seas, but without any such visits having in the least con- 

 tributed to enlarge our information respecting a group so im- 

 portant by geographical position. 



In 1602, Captain Lancaster, commander of an English 

 ship, passed ten days on the Nicobars, during which he 

 hardly visited the southern islands. Great and Little Nicobar, 

 but kept to the small island of Sombrero, of the northern 

 cluster, now called Bampoka. He there found trees of such 

 circmnference and height, as would serve for the construction 

 of the largest ships. Towards the middle of the seventeenth 

 century, Keeping, a Swede, made his appearance at the 

 Nicobars. Happening to be on board a Dutch vessel, which 

 touched in 1647 at one of the islands, he thought he per- 

 ceived among the inhabitants certain men fm-nished with 

 caudal appendages, whereas it was their peculiar clothing, 

 which consists of a long narrow piece of woven stuff, wound 



* Anciennes relations des Tndcs et de la Chine de deux voyageurs Mahometans, 

 qui y allerent dans le IXeme siecle. Traduit de 1' Arabe avec des remarques par 

 Ens. Renaudot. Paris, chez Coignard, 1718. 8vo. 



