THE ISLANDS OF THE BAY OF BENGAL. 109 



only place where the surf seemed practicable, I found that all 

 the largest trees were prostrate ; trunks piled above trunks, as 

 though they were mere straws in a barn yard, the whole wrapped 

 in a perfect mist of creepers, through which pierced the less lofty 

 trees that had weathered the cyclone of the previous October. 

 Although all the smaller branches had been torn off these, they 

 were coated with foliage, and many of the fallen trees appeared, 

 so full were they of leaf, flower, and fruit, rather to like their 

 present humble position than otherwise, which was so far 

 fortunate, that certainly neither all the king's horses, nor all the 

 king's men could ever have set these Humpty Dumptys (some 

 of which had a girth of over 30 feet) up again. 



Such a villainously impassable jungle I never came across. 

 I made my way in for. about 100 yards, and saw and shot a 

 couple of Andaman Sun-birds (A. andamanica), and this was the 

 only land-bird I saw, except a number of the Hornbills, a good 

 quarter of a mile up the hill and utterly unapproachable. 



The beach was very different to what we had generally seen 

 in the islands; there was, of course, an abundance of milk-white 

 coral fragments of all sizes from that of a man's head to those 

 of grains of sand ; but this was intermingled with innumerable 

 water-worn fragments of trachytic porphyry, of every shade of 

 color, red$ purple, green, brown and gray, speckled and dotted 

 with mica, augite, and other crystals, which, wet with spray, 

 looked very gay and bright against the white coral. • Here, as 

 in many other of these islands, the beach was strewn with 

 fragments of wreck, amongst which the door of a cabin, 

 obviously once belonging to some European vessel, was conspi- 

 cuous. 



We had landed in a tiny indentation of the shore, bounded 

 on either hand by precipices. We could not get along the 

 beach, neither could we make our way through the jungle, so we 

 were fain to take boat once more and try our luck elsewhere. 

 Soon we made the bay where others of the party had landed. 

 There was still a great deal of surf here, and the boats were 

 anchored well outside it ; our friends had landed on a raft, 

 made up from the companion ladder of some vessel, and the 

 cork cushions of the life-boat had been, as we after- 

 wards learnt, and as might have been expected, soundly 

 soused en route. After some delay several of the lascars swam 

 out to us with this precious raft. As it could only take one at 

 a time, and as I did not much like the look of the concern, or 

 of the heavy rolls just ahead, I most generously and unselfishly 

 yielded the pas to my eager companion, and not wishing to 



