LITTLE COCO ISLAND 141 



islands — Comoros, Mauritius, and Seychelles — of th;it 

 region. 



After striking our camp on Great Coco, we spent 

 nearly a week in exploring the island of Little Coco, 

 which lies about 9 miles to the south-east, the channel 

 between the two islands being full of dangers. This 

 island, which runs nearly due north and south, is 

 hardly 2I miles long, and between half and quarter 

 of a mile broad. If you keep to the beach, which 

 consists chiefly of dead coral, in places rising abruptly 

 out of deep water, you can stroll round it in a 

 morning ; but if you wish to cross it, you find that 

 after passing through a fringing belt of coconut 

 palms, carpeted with convolvulus [Ipomcea biloba), you 

 have to cut your way, first through thickets of screw- 

 pine, and then through a dense jungle with a matted 

 undergrowth of thorny canes and creepers, before you 

 reach the open forest that clothes the narrow central 

 ridge. In the jungle, the little long-snouted and short- 

 tailed Andaman pig (Sus andamanensis) will be seen, 

 the fallen fruits of cycads and of the country 

 almond " ( Terminalid) furnishing it with abundance of 

 food. We also came across spiders — a gaudy Gaster- 

 acantha, hanging exposed in an obtrusive web ; and 

 a curious, long-legged species, which, as it hung from 

 a single thread, exactly resembled a dead leaf in colour 

 and form. But, as on all these islands, the principal 

 inhabitants are land-crabs of various kinds. 



