40 Voyage of the Novara. 



Cecilia of Moulmein, with the view of fetching cocoa-nuts. 

 The natives of Teressa, however, showed such determined 

 hostility to the captain of the vessel, that Wilkinson advised 

 him to abandon the island without further delay, ere the in- 

 tended shipment of cocoa-nuts was comple.ted. 



Another English captain, named Iselwood, seems once to 

 have carried over some natives of Teressa to Kar-Nicobar, and 

 afterwards taken them back again. There does not exist, 

 however, any regular commercial intercourse between Kar- 

 Nicobar and the remaining islands of the Archipelago. The 

 boats of the natives are much too small, and unsuitable to 

 admit of their undertaking voyages to any distance, unless 

 for some very important purpose, such, for instance, as bring- 

 ing pottery ware from the island of Chowry, or Chowra, 

 where alone in the Archipelago that manufacture is car- 

 ried on. 



The Frenchman, Tigard, affirmed that the natives con- 

 stantly spoke of another race of men inhabiting the interior, 

 who have but one eye in the middle of the forehead, who pos- 

 sess no fixed habitation, but pass the night among the trees 

 like wild beasts, and subsist upon fruits and roots dug up in 

 the forest. This superstition meets with the more ready ac- 

 ceptance among the natives, as not one of them has ever pene- 

 trated into the interior. All their villages lie along the shore, 

 as far as the tract of coral sand reaches and the cocoa-nut is 

 thriving. Here the frugal native finds all that is necessary to 

 satisfy his very limited requirements. The cocoa-palm and 



