178 ANDAMAN ISLANDS AND INHABITANTS 



as it were, a row or chain of islands, an infinite number, of 

 which many are inhabited with wild people ; and they call those 

 islands the Islands of Andemaon, and their people savage or 

 wild, because they eat one another. Also, these islands have 

 war one with another ; for they have small barques, and with 

 them they take one another, and eat one another : and if by 

 evil chance any ship be lost on those islands, as many have been, 

 there is not one man of those ships that escapeth uneaten or 

 unslain. These people have not any acquaintance with any 

 other people, neither have they trade with any, but live only 

 on such fruits as the islands yield." * 



An Italian doctor, John Francis GemelH, who made a 

 voyage round the world, touched at the Nicobars in 1695, ^^^ 

 refers incidentally to the neighbouring group. " Friday the 3rd, 

 we were in sight of the island of Nicobar. The island pays an 

 annual tribute of a certain number of human bodies to the 

 island of Andemaon, to be eaten by the natives of it. These 

 brutes rather than men, use, when they have wounded an enemy, 

 to run greedily to suck the blood that runs. The Dutch are 

 witness of this cruelty of theirs ; for they, going with fire-ships 

 to subdue them, and landing 800 men, though they were well 

 entrenched to defend themselves against those wild people, yet 

 they were most of them killed, very few having the good 

 fortune to fly to their ships. . . . The chief motive of the 

 Dutch to attempt the conquest of that island, was a report 

 spread abroad that there was a well in that island whose water 

 converted iron into gold, and was the true philosopher's stone. . . . 

 No man in Europe or Asia can give any certain account of 

 it, because those people have no commerce with any nation in 

 the world." This vanished wonder was discovered by an English 

 vessel that was driven to the islands ; for a native who was 

 carrying a shell of water accidentally spilt some of the contents 

 on the anchor, and the part so wetted immediately turned into 

 gold ! The narrative goes on to say that the unhappy native, 



* Extractes of Master Ccesar Frederike : his Ei(^hieen Yearcs' Indian 

 Observations. Purchus : his Filgrimes, London, 1625 ; vol. ii., p. 1710. 



