CHAPTER XIV 



GREAT NICOBAR — WEST AND SOUTH COASTS 



"Domeat" — Malay Traders — Trade Prices — The Shorn Pen Language — Place 

 Names — Pulo Babi — The growth of Land — Climbing a Palm Tree — 

 Servitude — Population — Views on Marriage with the Aborigines — Towards 

 the Interior — A Shorn Pen Village — The Inhabitants — Canoe-building — 

 Barter — The West Coast — South Bay — Walker Island — Chang-ngeh — 

 Up the Galathea River — Water — We leave the Nicobars and sail to 

 Sumatra. 



We hove up anchor at 8 a.m. — the hour at which a breeze 

 usually sprang up — and sailed for Pulo Babi, a few miles down 

 the coast, taking as passenger an old njan named Domeat who 

 had been staying at K6penheat. 



He produced a number of chits for our perusal, and from one 

 we learned that it was Domeat — now a toothless, but sturdy old 

 gentleman, with nutcracker jaws and a benevolent expression — 

 who brought news of the recovery of the body of Captain Elton, 

 commander of the station gunboat, who was drowned in the 

 surf while attempting to land at Trinkat Sambelong * village, on 

 the east coast, in March 1881. 



Most of the letters were written by Asiatics, and from them 

 it seemed that the last Malay vessel to call at the islands arrived 

 in 1877. Many formerly came to purchase coconuts, but this 

 people, like our own nation, has been ousted from the trade by 

 the inhabitants of China and the Indian Empire. 



According to our informant, the Chinese pay the coast natives 

 one packet of tobacco (value 2^d.) for three bundles of rattan, 

 while the Nicobarese, who act merely as middlemen, and have 

 * Native name = Ldful. 



