1876.] F. A. de Roepstorff, — On the Inhcibitants of the N'icohars. 143 



wliere the river formed a right angle, and where a big jungle-covered hill 

 overhangs steeply the river. Behind this hill the river forms a little bay and 

 in this we found three or foiir canoes fastened near land. We landed and 

 climbed the hill sloj)e. We found the place carefully railed off from the 

 river side, and inside this rail, which enclosed the whole hill, lay 7 or 8 huts, 

 but all were left by the inhabitants. On the hill slope lay a fallen log with 

 its crown resting on the other side of the valley, where the canoes were lying, 

 like a bridge in the air. From the care with which the place had been railed 

 off, one might think that these poor savages were afraid of being attacked 

 and had kept this line of retreat open." (This alludes I beheve to the 

 fallen log.) " But of whom were they afraid ? who were their enemies ? 

 Captain Aschland, who had visited the same spot the day before, had found, 

 that it had been just evacuated, that lire was still burning on their cooking 

 places ; they could not possibly know of our approach — so that it could not 

 be us they feared. It was hardly either against the coast people that they 

 wanted to defend themselves, for it was quite apparent that these two 

 peoples, although they live in the same island, which is only 28 miles long and 

 12 to 16 miles wide at its very broadest, were quite ignorant of each other, 

 so that the coast people spoke of the inland tribe as very forest-demons, 

 who lived in the trees, eat frogs and snakes, which they caught by super- 

 natural means, and altogether resembled very much the animals whose name 

 they gave them, namely Orang-utangs. They assured us that they had 

 neither houses nor canoes and now the first things we met were canoes and 

 houses. Against whom were they thus keeping on the defence ? Was it 

 possible that war with its wretchedness had found its way into the centre 

 of the jtmgles of this little island, and that the coviple of hundi-ed people 

 who live here, should try to destroy each other in this little place ? All 

 these questions and conjectures thereon forced themselves on our minds as 

 we wandered about in this little deserted village, whose only inhabitant we 

 found enclosed in a sort of jDrison formed of a coviple of logs with sticks 

 between. It was a pig who seemed famished, and to judge from this fact, 

 the inhabitants had probably not been there for several days. That this 

 establishment had recently been formed was evident from the fresh "state 

 of the palisading and the poles on which the huts rested. We all agreed 

 that the inhabitants must be in a higher state of civilisation than our 

 friends the coast Nicobarese would allow to the forest-people. It is true 

 that the huts were the most wretched specimens we yet had seen, there was 

 hardly space for two i)eople to sit in them, much less to lie in them, but 

 yet they were huts, and built on the same principle as those of the coast 

 people, namely, raised from the ground on poles, which mode of construc- 

 tion is however alwaj^s used by Malays when in swampy places. Several 

 were merely small sleeping-jilatforms, with one side against the trunk of a 



