20 CORAL AND ATOLLS 



desertion of his followers; headed by one Neh Basir, who was 

 born in Malacca, the descendant of parents presented to 

 Alexander Hare by the Rajah of Banjer. Neh Basir afterwards 

 married a slave girl named Daphne, belonging to Hare, and 

 he died on June 19, 1893, at the age of 88. He formed one 

 of the direct links with Hare's time amongst the Cocos-born 

 Malays, and his descendants to-day are numerous. 



Little by little Hare's influence diminished as his subjects 

 gradually dwindled away, and before the end of ten years 

 he finally retired from the island to die in Singapore. His 

 attempt to realise his ideal — to be the monarch of a slavish 

 Eastern court amidst the luxurious setting of a tropical coral 

 island — had proved a failure. His band of musicians, his 

 slaves, his courtiers, his harem, and his splendid sovereignty 

 had slowly but surely slipped from his grasp, and the more 

 stubborn, more practical rule of Ross Primus had ruined his^ 

 Utopia. 



Of Hare's reign there is little but tradition in the islands 

 to-day, but many of the people are of course descendants of 

 his retinue, and there is left at least one fine silver badge, 

 which — popularly supposed to be the insignia of the keepers 

 of the harein- — is the old livery badge of the East India 

 Company. 



When Hare left the islands Ross Primus laid claim to the 

 whole group, and was styled the King of the Cocos-Keeling 

 Islands. It is Charles Darwin, the atoll's most noteworthy 

 visitor, who gives us our first picture of the settlement — and 

 it is not a very flattering one. 



In April 1836 the Beagle arrived in the lagoon, and 

 Darwin wrote in his journal an account of the atoll and its 

 flora and fauna that to-day, after a lapse of 70 years, strikes 

 one for its wonderful accuracy. Of the settlement he said : 

 " The Malays are now nominally in a state of freedom, and 

 certainly are so as far as regards their personal treatment ; but 

 in most other points they are considered as slaves. From 

 their discontented state, from the repeated removals from islet 

 to islet, and perhaps also from a little mismanagement, things 



