282 AN OLD ACCOUNT OF KAR NICOBAR 



seemed to have been taken from the borassi or chamoerops. 

 Some grown-up girls I saw here as well, their hair was cut off 

 below the ear and hung loosely round their head. 



" However many people I saw here of different sex, I did 

 not come across any whom I could have termed old. The 

 only exception was a woman, apparently about fifty years old. 

 The shortness of my stay here prevented me to make further 

 researches and inquiries, which besides would have been very 

 difficult considering the language and utter simplicity of the 

 natives. As far as I could observe they were very vague in 

 their ideas as regards years, months, weeks, days, and hours. 



" Near one of the large houses I saw some piles ; they were 

 about ten inches thick, square, and two and a half feet high. 

 At the upper end they had two holes, meeting in the middle 

 like a cross ; through them were plaited many coloured ribbons 

 both of linen and of cloth, presenting the appearance of streamers ; 

 at their end there was a stick about as high as a man, at the 

 end of this a piece of white linen was fastened of about two 

 inches wide, looking like a flag ; all this was surrounded by a 

 sort of conical figure of the sheaths of the chamoerops, so that 

 only in front a little piece of the streamers was to be seen. I 

 made inquiries as to these things, and they told me they were 

 monuments for the dead, and that lately three persons had died 

 in this house. I saw some more of the same kind of stakes 

 which were already old, but there was not one near every 

 house. 



" I saw some persons of both sexes wearing green fringes, 

 and I inquired why they were in this manner distinguished 

 from the others ; as much as I could learn from my interpreter 

 these were those who had held their feast of love. This is 

 always celebrated in the woods, never anywhere else, and as a 

 sign of this joy they wore these fringes ; they were really made 

 from long pisang* leaves split through the middle and fringed 

 crossways. They are first worn round their neck, then across 

 their shoulders, and at last round their loins. 



*" Banana. 



