104 KACHAL AND OTHER ISLANDS 



did not seem to hold out much promise as a collecting 

 ground. 



There is no harbour on its coasts, for the shores of the island, 

 which is crescent-shaped, are almost unbroken. We afterwards 

 heard that, two or three months previously, a Chinese junk, whose 

 crew all reached the shore, had been wrecked on the reefs fronting 

 this part of the island. 



In their customs, style of architecture, and in the more 

 general absence of talismans and demon - exorcising regalia, the 

 people of Teressa and Bompoka are said to resemble those 

 of Kar Nicobar, but their language possesses great dialectical 

 variation. 



Teressa is 34 square miles in area, and rises in the north 

 to nearly 900 feet. The bed rock is serpentine, covered with 

 sandstone, and there is a fringe of recent coralline alluvium round 

 the shore, while beds of coral on the high land of the interior 

 indicate upheaval since the formation of the older alluvium. 



The soil of the grass-lands is of an igneous clay formation — 

 magnesian clay, formed by disintegration of the plutonic rocks, 

 whose upheaval in two successive stages brought the Nicobars 

 into existence. Overlying it in many places are the beds of 

 coral, and to these formations the grassy downs of the island 

 are confined — lallang, with occasional screw-pines, a bracken-like 

 fern {Gleichenia dichotovm), delicate ground orchids, and various 

 scrubby plants {Kydia calycina), which point to the occurrence of 

 annual fires. The transition from grass-land to high forest, 

 which appears on the sandstone, is very sudden. 



The graceful Nicobar palm {Ptychoj-ap/us augusla) is common 

 in the jungle. Whole groves of this beautiful tree fill the moister 

 ravines, and give a characteristic appearance to the forest. 

 Nearly equally conspicuous are large numbers of Stercnlia 

 canipannlata. 



Fruit and vegetables are the same as are found on Kar 

 Nicobar, with the addition of tobacco, of which several small 

 fields have been raised from seed imported from the west coast 

 of India. 



