xix THE ANDAMAN ISLANDERS 297 



of the natives) which enabled him to obtain the required in- 

 formation with facilities which probably no one else could have 

 had, and whose observations " On the Aboriginal Inhabitants 

 of the Andaman Islands," published by the Anthropological 

 Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, are most valuable, not 

 only for the information they contain, but as correcting the 

 numerous erroneous and misleading statements circulated re- 

 garding these people by previous and less well-informed or less 

 critical authors. 



The Arab writer of the ninth century previously alluded 

 to states that " their complexion is frightful, their hair frizzled, 

 their countenance and eyes frightful, their feet very large, and 

 almost a cubit in length, and they go quite naked," while Marco 

 Polo (about 1285) says that "the people are no better than 

 wild beasts, and I assure you all the men of this island of 

 Angamanain have heads like dogs, and teeth and eyes like- 

 wise ; in fact, in the face they are just like big mastiff dogs." 

 These specimens of mediaeval anthropology are almost rivalled 

 by the descriptions of the customs and moral character of the 

 same people published as recently as 1862, based chiefly on 

 information obtained from one of the runaway sepoy convicts, 

 and which represent them as among the lowest and most 

 degraded of human beings. 



The natives of the Andamans are divided into nine distinct 

 tribes, each inhabiting its own district. Eight of these live 

 upon the Great Anaaman Islands, and one upon the hitherto 

 almost unexplored Little Andaman. Although each of these 

 tribes possesses a distinct dialect, these are all traceable to 

 the same source, and are all in the same stage of develop- 

 ment. The observations that have been made hitherto relate 

 mostly to the tribe inhabiting the south island, but it does 

 not appear that there is any great variation either in physical 

 characters or manners, customs, and culture among them. 



With regard to the important character of size, we have 

 more abundant and more accurate information than of most 

 other races. Mr. Man gives the measurements of forty-eight 

 men and forty-one women, making the average of the former 

 4 feet 10 1 inches, that of the latter 4 feet 7^ inches, a 

 difference therefore of 3|- inches between the sexes. The 



