xix THE ANDAMAN ISLANDERS 295 



has a breadth nowhere exceeding 20 miles. It is divided by 

 narrow channels into three, called respectively North, Middle, 

 and South Andaman, and there are also various smaller 

 islands belonging to the group. Little Andaman is a detached 

 island lying about 28 miles to the south of the main group, 

 about 27 miles in length and 10 to 18 in breadth. 



Although these islands have been inhabited for a very 

 great length of time by people whose state of culture and 

 customs have undergone little or no change, as proved by the 

 examination of the contents of the old kitchen-middens, or 

 refuse heaps, found in many places in them, and although 

 they lie so near the track of civilisation and commerce, the 

 islands and their inhabitants were practically unknown to the 

 world until so recently as the year 1858. It is true that 

 their existence is mentioned by Arabic writers of the ninth 

 century, and again by Marco Polo, and that in 1788 an 

 attempt was made to establish a penal colony upon them by 

 the East India Company, which was abandoned a few years 

 after ; but the bad reputation the inhabitants had acquired 

 for ferocious and inhospitable treatment of strangers brought 

 by accident to their shores, caused them to be carefully avoided, 

 and no permanent settlement or relations of anything like a 

 friendly nature, or likely to afford any useful information 

 as to the character of the islands or the inhabitants, were 

 established. It is fair to mention that this hostility to 

 foreigners, which f<t>r long was one of the chief characteristics 

 by which the Andamanese were known to the outer world, 

 found much justification in the cruel experiences they suffered 

 from the mal-practices, especially kidnapping for slavery, of 

 the Chinese and Malay traders who visited the islands in 

 search of beche de mer and edible birds'-nests. It is also to 

 this characteristic that the inhabitants owe so much of their 

 interest to us from a scientific point of view, for we have here 

 the rare case of a population, confined to a very limited space, 

 and isolated for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years from 

 all contact with external influence, their physical characters 

 unmixed by crossing, and their culture, their beliefs, their 

 language, entirely their own. 



In 1857, when the Sepoy mutiny called the attention of 



