1 24 Voyage of the Novara. 



making but one voyage in the course of the year, the natives 

 of the various islands kept up among themselves quite a fre- 

 quent and regular communication. This favourable trait was 

 undoubtedly owing in great measure to the defectiveness of 

 their otherwise very elegant, but small, slight-built canoes, 

 which are but ill adapted for voyaging to any remote distance. 



Respecting that other swarthy, crisp-haired, savage race, 

 Avidely different from that inhabiting the coasts of Nicobar, 

 which, according to a legend, dwells in the forests of Great 

 Nicobar, and lives upon snakes, vermin, roots, and leaves of 

 plants, and in the Nicobar idiom called Baju-oal-Tsckiia, we 

 could only add to our stock of information by recitals that 

 obviously pertained to the domain of Fable-land. When, 

 however, we remember that not a single traveller or au- 

 thor who has indulged such gossiping, nay, that not even 

 the natives who tell such stories of them, have ever seen 

 one of this race, we sliall be excused for suggesting in reply 

 to the numberless conjectures afloat respecting these mys- 

 terious inhabitants, that the alleged denizens of the interior 

 of Great Nicobar are neither a widely different race of men 

 from the coast-natives, nor yet an offshoot of the crisp-haired 

 swarthy race of Papuas from New Guinea, but that, dispossessed 

 and degraded by a conjuncture of various hostile influences, 

 they hold, with respect to the inhabitants of the sea-board, a 

 similar position to tliat occupied by the Bushmen of Namaqua- 

 land to tlie Hottentots of Cape Colony. 



In the circumstances in which the inliabitants of this group 



