HISTORICAL REFERENCES 209 



under the name of Ldkvarem, opposite Lamuri (a kingdom of 

 Sumatra), and the very imaginatively-minded author, Friar Oderic,* 

 compiled a chapter on Nicoveran which is a mass of the wildest 

 fable, utterly unworthy of credence, containing, as it does, details 

 of people with faces like dogs, who are stout in battle (not 

 a characteristic of the modern Nicobarese) and worshippers of 

 the ox, while their king possessed strings of pearls, and the 

 largest ruby in the world. 



" Concerning the island of Necuveran, when you leave the 

 island of Java the less (Sumatra) and the kingdom of Lambri, 

 you sail north almost 1 50 miles and then you come to two islands, 

 one of which (Great Nicobar) is called Necuveran. In this island 

 they have no king nor chief, but live like beasts. And I tell 

 you they all go naked, both men and women, and do not use the 

 slightest covering of any kind. They are idolaters. Their viroods 

 are all of noble and valuable kinds of trees ; such as Red Sanders, 

 and Indian-nut, and Cloves, and Brazil, and sundry other good 

 spices. There is nothing else worth relating," says Marco Polo, 

 who probably only passed near the islands in or about the year 

 1293, but who gathered fairly accurate information about them. 



x'\fter the Cape of Good Hope was doubled in 1497, the islands 

 were frequented by voyagers, as expeditions to the East became 

 more numerous. 



"It was the Nicobar custom in 1566," says Master Caesar 

 Frederike, that " if any ship come near to that place or coast as 

 they pass that way, as in my voyage it happened, as I came from 

 Malacca through the channel of Sombrero, there came two of 

 their barques near our ship, laden with fruit, as with vionces (which 

 we call Adam's apples, which fruit is like to our turnips, but is very 

 sweet and good to eat). They would not come into the ship for 

 anything we could do, neither would they take any money for 

 their fruit, but they would truck for old shirts or old linen breeches. 

 These rags we let down with a rope into their barque unto them, 

 and look what they thought their things to be worth ; so much 

 fruit they would make fast to the rope, and let us hale it in : and 



* "Travels, a.d. 131 5-1330," Hakliiyt Library. 



O 



