1881.] F. A. de Koepstorff — On the inhabitants of the Nicolars. 109 



fancy pleased. She brought with her a boy o£ about 6, a nice intelligent- 

 looking lad, and, afterwards, on her back and hanging to her neck, a small 

 boy of about 2. — T. Cadell." 



It will be seen from the above notes that the people is a comparatively 

 big race with straight hair and Mongolian twisted eyes, and in them Col. 

 Cadell agrees with me that every trace of Papuan or Negrito features is 

 quite absent. 



There remains, however, Koal the man I met in October. I described 

 him in the paper of Jan. 1881 thus : 



" One look at him sufficed to assure me that I had now come across 

 a specimen of a curly-haired race, Papuan or Negrito. His hair was 

 bushy and with rather a bend, and was very abundant. It covered the 

 whole sur face of his head and was not, like the hair of an Andaman Negrito, 

 of the Papuan of New Guinea or of the Negro, found in tufts or patches. 

 It had, however, the Papuan quality of being long, longer than the hair 

 of the Andamanese ever is. The hair was, or appeared to be, brownish, 

 interspersed with white, very coarse and stiff, and gave an exaggerated 

 appearance of size to his head.... His face was pleasant, especially when 

 smiling, his forehead was high, his eyes were black, his nose well formed 

 and arched, his upper lip was remarkably prominent from the base, his 

 underlip small, his teeth were black but of natural size. ...His colour was 

 copper-brown and a shade fairer than our Great Nicobar and Camorta 

 guides. His complexion did not at all remind me of the deep shining 

 black of the Andaman Negrito.... He had his private parts tied up, but in 

 such a loose way that it was evident that the Coast-people are right when 

 they assert that the male Shom-Bengs go quite naked in their own haunts." 

 This description I still maintain is correct. Colonel Cadell states that he 

 noticed that he was quite different from the others and that, if searching 

 for Papuan or Negrito elements, he would most certainly have made the 

 mistake of taking him to be such, if he had seen him alone. 



He is quite a phenomenon, but, I think, a lusus naturce, for we saw his 

 children and neither of them had the slightest curl in their hair nor any 

 feature recalling the Papuan. All the others agreed in appearance. 

 They were all scanty-haired on the face and on the body, and we only 

 saw one man (not described in the list) who had a fairly well developed 

 moustache. They seemed of mixed Malay-Mongolian origin, and they were 

 doubtlessly a different race from the Coast-people, being slightly fairer and 

 with lighter hair and darker eyes than they, but yet the difference is not so 

 great that it would be impossible to meet a Shombeng among the Coast- 

 people and not notice the difference. 



They are great cultivators and had cleared big tracts of land but in a 

 very slovenly manner. No attempt had been made to burn the fallen trees 



