Native Implements and Weapons. 121 



that we do not venture to publish any special Information 

 upon this point. Be it however permitted to express our 

 opinion, that, judging by the tendency to a decent style of 

 dress and the extreme elegance of the decorations of the 

 canoes and the huts of the islanders of Kar-Nicobar, as con- 

 trasted with the destitution, nakedness, and wretched con- 

 dition of the natives of the southern Islands of the group, 

 civilization seems to be advancing from north to south with 

 slow but sure steps. And it will probably interest the philo- 

 logist to be informed that both in Kar-Nicobar and Nang- 

 Icauri, the most important settlement bears the same name, 

 Malacca, as the chief city on the adjoining Malay peninsula. 

 As the natives in this delicious far niente existence live ex- 

 clusively upon the precious gifts of an all-bountiful Nature, 

 which provides them at once with food and drink, one natur- 

 ally finds among them few implements of labour, indeed only 

 such as are indispensably necessary in erecting their huts, in 

 preparing their canoes, and in enabling them readily to 

 open the cocoa-nuts. And even these tools, as, for instance, 

 hatchets, cutlasses, files, &c., were first procured through 

 intercourse with civilization. 



Their weapons consist merely of lances or javelins with 

 points of iron or hardened wood, by the number of which, it 

 is presumed, the wealth of a Nicobar islander is estimated. 

 A cross-bow, which we saw in the possession of a native of 

 Kar-Nicobar, although made on the island, was manifestly of 

 European design originally, and merely an imitation. 



