SOUTH ANDAMAN 29 



Rutland Island, rising on the east in tall precipitous cliffs, 

 on the north slopes gently to the strait, which on both sides 

 is bordered by alternate tracts of yellow beach and bright 

 green mangrove. 



We hauled round Bird's Nest Cape — a bare rocky headland 

 of serpentine, still producing those edible delicacies which are 

 responsible for the name — and, with a man aloft to con a 

 passage along the coral-reef, carefully avoided a rock near mid- 

 channel, and took up a berth in quiet waters about a mile from 

 the entrance of the strait. 



When sailing along little known shores, especially in the 

 tropics, a look-out man should always be stationed at the 

 masthead, for from that place dangers of reef and rock 

 unnoticed from the deck are plainly visible. Year by year 

 coral-reefs increase, and banks alter so greatly that entire 

 reliance cannot be placed on the chart, even though it be of 

 comparatively recent date. 



We landed on South Andaman in a little bay, whose waters 

 lapped a beach of golden sand. It was, as usual, nearly filled 

 with coral, but fortunately the tide was never so low that we 

 could not land directly on the shore. To left and right the 

 land rose in gentle hills, on the one hand forest, and on the 

 other grass-clothed, but beyond the centre, where it was flat, 

 lay an expanse of tangled swamp. 



Although their tracks, made since the last high tide, ran 

 all along the beach, we saw no natives then or later ; but just 

 within the bush we found an old camping-place — cold ashes, 

 heaps of broken shells, and a dilapidated hut about 6 feet 

 square and high, made of light branches stuck in the ground, 

 with tops drawn together and covered with a few palm leaves 

 laid stem downwards. 



That night a fire shone brightly on the beach of Rutland 

 Island ; and so next morning, while Abbott in the dinghy went 

 north to make the round of the traps, I, with a crew in the 

 whaleboat, rowed across the strait, and when we were within two 

 or three hundred yards of the shore, a tall native ran down the 



