.1861.] 



Memoranda relative to three Andamanese. 



165 



been remarked amongst the aborigines of Australia and the South Sea 

 islands. Crusoe's height is 5' W That of Friday 4' 9|" The former 

 is of rather a spare frame, which may be partly attributed to 

 pneumonia. Friday is square, muscular, and deep chested. Both 

 have small hands and feet ; which, with their foreheads, are cicatrised 

 all over with scratches inflicted on themselves as a cure for all manner 

 of pains and aches ; and the feet of both had a constant adematous 

 appearance, with small feeble toes wide apart, as if they were never 

 much used to pedestrian exercise. Both of them occasionally com- 

 plained of headache, and would then smell with avidity at salts, stuff 

 their nostrils with leaves freshly plucked, or as a last resource, score 

 their foreheads with a knife or a piece of broken glass, till they bled 

 pretty freely. They were much averse to taking our medicines, and 

 Orusoe on one occasion threatened his Burman keeper with a knife, 

 for trying to administer some nauseous dose, Neither of them would 

 take to learning English. They repeated like parrots the words we 

 endeavoured to make them understand, and at last grew so averse to 

 their schooling, that at any attempt to commence it, they would feign 

 fatigue or sickness as readily as any truant schoolboy. They were in 

 fact too old to learn, and although Friday was smart and intelligent, 

 he showed it more by his extraordinary powers of mimicry than by 

 learning anything useful. This persistence in imitating every gesture 

 and every sound of the voice, made it particularly difficult to obtain 

 from him the Andamanese name of even any visible object. Those 

 entered in the annexed vocabulary, have been elicited with no small 

 labour and patience, by myself and their keeper Shway Hman. I 

 succeeded in obtaining the names of a variety of fishes, (common to 

 the bay of Bengal,) by showing coloured drawings of them : but of 

 quadrupeds they appeared perfectly ignorant, the only mammal they 

 seemed to know was a pig, " Bogo," and this name they applied in- 

 differently to cattle, ponies, elephants, deer, and monkeys. They 

 appeared also to have very few names for birds, and when shewn the 

 pictures of some which I knew to be found in the Andamans ? merely 

 attempted to imitate the notes of any species they might have had 

 in their minds at the time. 



To judge by Crusoe and Friday, the Andamanese are not a timid 

 race. They mingled unconcernedly amongst crowds of people, and 

 at first used to help themselves to any thing they took a fancy to, off 



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A 



