THE ISLANDS OP THE BAY OF BENGAL. 45 



" The Mangrove forest. — Several deep channels, rich in fishes 

 and navigable by the canoes of the natives, occasionally extend in 

 serpentine turns through these mangrove- swamps. One not un- 

 commonly meets at the end of such channels, in a hidden locality, 

 the villages of the natives, as for instance, on Trinkut the village 

 Janoba. 



" The brackish-water alluvium, the ground of the Rhizophori and 

 Cerithia, must, therefore, be considered as a soil perfectly unfit for 

 cultivation. It occupies only a small area as compared with that of 

 the islands, but it is nevertheless of a mischievous importance. Eor 

 it can justly be said that the Nicobars owe their unhealthy climate 

 principally to these brackish-water swamps, as they occasionally 

 extend for miles from the mouths of the rivers into the interior. 

 In these swampy districts, the change of the fresh to salt water 

 causes a decay of the organisms, which can only exist in the former, 

 the reverse takes place in salt water changing to fresh water. The 

 ebb exposes large areas, and decomposition of organic life takes 

 place, filling the air with most poisonous miasmas. 



" Dr. Hochstetter says that he especially had an opportunity of 

 studying these marked changes on a grand scale on the northern coast 

 of Great Nicobar (west of the Granges harbour). On the other hand 

 the coral land appears to be at once fertile, capable of cultivation, and 

 healthy, and the dry marine and fresh-water alluvium, to which on 

 the sea coast belongs the cocoa-palm forest, and further inland 

 extending to the base of the hills, a beautiful forest of various 

 kinds of large trees. This is the ground which the natives of these 

 islands have selected for their abode, finding here all the neces- 

 saries of life. 



'- The cocoa-palm forest is described by Dr. Hochstetter as the 

 picture of life, and he thinks that if the cocoa-palms had not been 

 there, the islands would have been probably uninhabited up to this 

 time. He further states that, taking the number of the inhabitants 

 of all the islands to be 5,000, there would be about five and a half 

 millions of nuts required for annual use. The annual export of 

 cocoanuts can further be estimated as about ten millions, for Car 

 Nicobar alone exports between Wo and three millions. This gives 

 fifteen and sixteen millions of cocoanuts to meet the annual 

 demand. On the northern islands the cocoa-palms occupy com- 

 paratively a larger area, while on the southern islands, especially 

 on Great ISicobar, they are nearly altogether wanting. The 

 northern islands are, therefore, the most thickly inhabited, and the 

 cocoa-palms are there divided as property, but on the southern 

 islands they appear to be the free, common good of all. 



" The Nicobarian not only lives on, but also in, the cocoa-palm 

 forest, having selected for himself not only the most comfortable 

 place for his hut, but being on the dry coralg round, exposed to 

 the current of the wind, also the most healthy situation. 



