Skptesiber 1, 1900 ] 



KNOWLEDGE, 



197 



spirals, and not in the separate tufte, with intervening 

 bai'e spaces, chaj-acteristic of the Bushman type. While 

 generally black, it may sometimes be very dai'k brown 

 in colour. In some instances the hair is allowed to 

 grow to it« full length, but it is veiy frequently (as in 

 the accompanying illustration') partially or completely 



Group of Andamanese at the Calcutta luternational 

 Exhibition, lS83.8i. 



Phoiograifhiid by Colonkl Watlhholsk. 



shaved. Professor Ball mentions meeting a large party 

 of Andamanese none of whom possessed a hair on any 

 part of their bodies. In mourning the head is invariably 

 shaved. 



Previous to the founding of the European settlement 

 at Port Blair, in the neighbourhood of which certain 

 regulations ai-e now enforced with regard to clothing 

 (as in our illustration), the Andamanese were in the 

 habit of going about in a perfectly nude condition, 

 save that the women wore a leaf suspended from a 

 girdle made of the fibi'es of rattan or the screw-pine. 

 This absence of di'ess is probably to some extent due 

 to the nature of the Andaman climate, which renders it 

 unnecessary to keep the body wann by artificial means. 

 With the exception of a small, and probably introduced, 

 race of wild pigs (whose flesh afforded an important 

 food supply), the islands are inhabited by no animals 

 larger than palm-civets, and even of these the natives 

 never learnt the art of dressing the skins. Neither did 

 they practise agriculture nor attempt to domesticate 

 the indigenous pigs and jungle fowl, but lived entirely 

 by hunting and fishing, and on such edible roots, fruits, 

 and berries as grow naturally in tho jungle. In 

 addition to pork, their animal food included the flesh 

 of palm-civets, dugongs, monitor lizards, turtles, and 

 occasionally porpoises, together with turtles' eggs, fish 

 of vai-iou5 descriptions, prawns, shell-fish, and even the 

 larvae of large wood-boring and burrowing beetles. The 

 hostility displayed to strangers (ap]3arcntly largely due 

 to kidnapping raids on the part of Chinese and Malays) 

 not improbably gave rise to the statement that the 



Andamanese were cannibals ; but this charge has been 

 completely disjjrovcd. 



Both sexes were thoroughly at home in tho water 

 from an extremely early age, and tho creeks and straits 

 of the island were navigated in dug-out canoes and out- 

 riggers of home manufacture. Home-made clay pots, 

 either partially baked by fire or dried in the sun, formed 

 tlieir domestic utensils; and for capturing game and 

 fish they employed bows and jutows, spears, harpoons, 

 and nets. With the latter, says Mr. Mann, they take 

 fish more readily than tho most skilful angler. In 

 modern times their speai's and arrows have been tipped 

 with bono or shell, but in tho old refuse heaps of the 

 islands polished arrow-heads and adzes of stone have 

 been discovered, cvidcuUy manufactured by the fore- 

 fathers of the present aborigines. And it has been 

 suggested that the use of stone has been superseded by 

 shell and bone owing to the greater facilities with which 

 the two latter substances are worked. Till within a 

 comparatively recent time chips or flakes of flint were, 

 however, still used for shaving, although these have 

 now been completely superseded by glass. Professor 

 Ball relates how he witnessed the manufacture of such 

 glass flakes by a woman who chipped them off from a 

 piece of dark bottle-glass with a pebble. " Having 

 struck off a flake of suitable character," he writes, " she 

 forthwith proceeded, with astonishing rapidity, to shave 

 off the spiral twists of hair which covered the head of 

 her son." But even at this date (1873) the writer was 

 infoi'mod that the art of making flint^flakes was entirely 

 lost ; the process of flaking being facilitated by first 

 beating the stones in a fire. Serviceable knives were 

 manufactured from a large bivalve shell to be met with 

 in numbers on the shores of the islands. 



The mention of fire affords an opportunity of refer- 

 ring to the extraordinary circumstance that although 

 the Andamanese were well acquainted with its use 

 (always eating their meat and fish in a more or less 

 cooked condition), yet they were totally unacquainted 

 with any method of producing it. According to the 

 legend, fire was originally obtained from a volcano in 

 Barren Island, situated to the eastward of the Middle 

 Andaman ; and it was ever since kept going by main- 

 taining a constant supply of smouldering or burning wood. 



In addition to strings of shells, the women wear 

 the skulls of deceased relatives as ornaments. Red 

 clay is employed for daubing the skin ; but during 

 periods of mourning, when the head is shaved, this is 

 leplaced by a uniform coating of white clay. Allusion 

 has been already made to the girdles and fishing-nets 

 of vegetable fibre, and the latter is also employed in 

 the manufacture of baskets and sleeping mats. As an 

 amusement, the men are fond of making " cat's cradle " 

 with pieces of string, and as the same game is practised by 

 the Dyaks of Borneo and other Malay tribes, it was 

 probably imported into the Andamans from the East, 

 as it can scarcely be regarded as a siu'vival from the 

 original Negrito population of the Malay Peninsula. 

 The dwellings of the Audamancce are of a rude and 

 primitive type, but these are not all alike, the most 

 simple being mere shelters of leaves and boughs, which 

 are usually erected only in temporary encampments and 

 not in the permanent villages. 



Although subject to passionate outbursts of temper, 

 during which arrows may be shot recklessly among 

 friends and relations, the Andamanese are described 

 by all who have known them well as singularly amiable 

 and kind in their mutual relations; and in many 

 respects they resemble the Melauesians, being merry. 



