438 THE LACCADIVES AND THE WEST COAST. 
I had better now, perhaps, in order to avoid repetition, give 
once for all a brief account of the islands as a whole, and of 
their population. 
The Laccadives, excluding the mere reefs, Cherbaniani, Che- 
riapani or Begrangur or Byrankoor, Pere-Mull-Par and Suheli- 
Par, the Pitti Sand Bank, and the uninhabited islands of Betra- 
Par, and of Bingaroo and Tingaroo, attached to Aucuttee, are 
9 in number, viz :— 
(1) Chitlac or Chetlat, (2) Kiltan, (3) Cardamum or Kada- 
mut, (4) Amini,—all under the direct management of the British 
Government,—and (5) Aucuttee or Agalti, (6) Cowrattee or Ca- 
bruttee,. (7) Androt or Underoo, (8) Kalpini, (9) Minecoy or 
Mankat—all under the suzeranity of the British Government, 
but immediately subordinate at present to the Bibi of Can- 
nanore. 
Minecoy is often, but erroneously, included amongst the 
Maldives, but alike in structure, population, and the authority 
to which it is subordinate, it pertains to the Laccadives. The 
Maldives are all under a resident Sultan of their own, and, ex- 
cept for the payment of a small tribute to the Ceylon adminis- 
tration, are independant. 
I was not able to visit Minecoy on the present occasion, but 
very early in 1863, coming out in the steamer, immediately 
after the wreck of the Columbia, we anchored to take up some 
of the engineers and crew, and I then had an opportunity of 
examining it. 
The inhabitants of the entire group are now Mahomedans, 
but are of Hindoo origin, and were only converted, according 
to their own account, some 300 years ago. According to 
the local tradition, the ancestors, the original colonists, formed 
part of an expedition, which set out from Malayala on the west 
coast for Mecca in search of their apostate King Bharmul Pere- 
Mull, and was wrecked on these islands. They still speak a 
dialect of Mallayalum, which they write in Arabic, and pre- 
serve traces of Malabar castes and of Malabar customs, e.g., of 
inheritance by the sister’s son. As this custom involves the 
admission of its being impossible for any man to be at all sure 
as to who may be the father of his wife’s sons, and therefore 
adopting his sister’s sons as his heirs, as at least having half of 
his own family blood in their veins—it recals to us a strange 
state of society in which public opinion was rather hard on the 
ladies. 
The general structure of many of the islands is well exem- 
plified by the plan of Kiltan, an oval reef, enclosing a lagoon, 
and the eastern side of the reef constituting the island, which 
has everywhere a tendency to increase in breadth by gaining 
