CHAPTER VII 



''MANY ISLES AND MANY FULL STRANGE PLACES " 



A Vain Search. An Apostle among the Laccadivians. The Fauna 

 of Coral Shingle. /;/ patenti prensus. Diamond Island and 

 the Gulf of Martaban. Rangoon : Pagodas and Philosophers. 

 The Tree of the Ten Utilities. Insidce Fortiinatce : the Coco 

 Islands : The Sights and Sounds of the Reefs. 



On the 28th October 1889, the Investigator left 

 Bombay in pursuance of her ninth annual programme, 

 which was, to carry a boat-party to survey the Bassein 

 River (one of the mouths of the Irrawaddy), stopping 

 at Port Blair in the Andamans to pick up the necessary 

 boats and tents ; to commence, while detained in that 

 neighbourhood, a survey of the Coco Islands ; and then, 

 when the weather on the Coromandel coast could be 

 relied on, to cross over the Bay again and take up 

 the survey of that coast at the point where it had been 

 left off the year before. 



Captain Carpenter s five-year tenure of the appoint- 

 ment having expired, the survey was now in charge 

 of Captain R. F. Hoskyn, R.N., and besides the 

 Royal Indian Marine officers of the previous season, 

 we had on board Lieut. F. Dobson and Mr H. A. 



90 



