THE ISLANDS OF THE BAY OF BENGAL. 119 



Once on my legs, I felt ashamed of my indolence, whilst 

 everyone else was, as I thought, so hard at work. So I toiled 

 up the glaring- beach, till I heard a hail, and found three more of 

 the party in a delightful shady nook who had just sat dowu to 

 rest a minute. I noticed, however, that they were nearly at the 

 ends of their cheroots, and that they had about twenty tapped 

 cocoanuts lying round them, so I put on a virtuous expression of 

 countenance and hinted that we should never get anything 

 if fellows slept the whole day in the shade. 



Talking of cocoanuts, of course, so far as numbers go, there 

 are plenty, but they are poor sickly things to the grand nuts 

 one gets at Car Nicobar and Galatea Bay. There a good nut 

 contains more than even a thirsty man can get through without 

 sundry stoppages, but here you require three to make a good 

 draught. I suppose I drank the contents of a dozen to-day. 



Everywhere in the belt hundreds and thousands of nuts lay 

 about, mostly sprouting, and with green fronds from one to 

 three feet high, growing out of them. The natives are very 

 fond of eating the kernels of recently sprouted nuts. On open- 

 ing the nut the kernels are found to have contracted together 

 into a spherical yellowish-white spongy mass from two to three 

 inches in diameter ; light and very cellular, but with a crisp 

 fracture like an apple and a delicate flavour. Anything more 

 unlike the kernel as we usually see it, in texture, shape, color 

 and taste, it would be difficult to imagine, and when first 

 brought" to me by some of the lascars I could not believe 

 that it really was what they told me. However I opened plenty 

 later myself, and soon got to like the nut in this form. It 

 is very digestible, and one can make a meal on it, which 

 one cannot do on the unaltered kernel. 



During the night we made our way to the neighbour- 

 hood of Preparis and there anchored about 8 a.m of the 26th. 

 The island itself is small, perhaps three miles round, but is 

 surrounded in all directions by huge fringing reefs, some of 

 them stretching away for miles and bare for a long dis- 

 tance at low tide. It is everywhere low and flat, and 

 is covered by thick stunted tree jungle pretty well tenanted 

 by birds. The Andaman Sun-bird and Paroquet were both 

 common. The Swallow was more abundant than I have seen 

 it elsewhere on our trip. We saw, but failed to secure, several 

 Koels and large Rose-band Paroquets. Carpopkaga bicolor 

 seemed pretty plentiful ; several Calobaies sulphur ea were shot, 

 and in a dry grassy hollow (for here too not a drop of fresh 

 water was to be found) we flushed a Chestnut Bittern 



