166 
XICOBAR ISLANDS. 
After eating, the young men and women, who are fancifully dressed 
with leaves, go to dancing, and the old people surround them, smok- 
ing tobacco, and drinking soura. The dancers, while performing, 
sing some of their tunes, which are far from wanting harmony, and 
to, which they keep exact time. Of musical instruments, they have only 
one kind, namely, a hollow bamboo, about two and a half feet long, 
and three inches in diameter, along the outside of which is stretched, 
from end to end, a single string, made of the threads of a split cane; 
and the place under the string is hollowed a little, to prevent it from 
touching. This instrument is played upon in the same manner as 
the guitar. It is capable of producing few notes ; but the performer 
makes it speak harmoniously, and generally accompanies it with 
the voice. 
Their habitations are generally built upon the beach, in villages of 
fifteen or twenty houses, each house containing a family of about 
twenty persons. They are raised upon wooden pillars, about ten 
feet from the ground ; they are round, have no windows, but appear 
like bee-hives covered with thatch. The entrance is through a trap- 
door below, where the family mounts by a ladder, which is drawn up 
at night. This manner of building is intended to secure the houses 
from snakes and rats, and for that purpose the pillars are bound 
round with a smooth kind of leaf, which prevents animals from mount- 
ing, and each pillar has a broad round flat piece of wood near the 
top of it, the projecting of which prevents the further progress of 
such vermin as have passed the leaf. The flooring is made of thin 
slips of bamboos, laid at such distances as to leave free admission for 
light and air ; and the inside is neatly furnished and decorated with 
fishing-lances, nets, &c. The art of making cloth is unknown to 
the inhabitants ; but from the ships that come to trade in cocoa-nuts, 
they purchase a much larger quantity of cloth than is consumed upon 
their own island. This is intended for the Choury market. 
Choury is a small island south of theirs, to which a large fleet of 
their bo its sail every year about November, to exchange clothes for 
canoes, K^r they cannot make these themselves. This voyage they 
perform by the sun and stars. They have two remarkable qualities : 
one is, their entire neglect of compliment and ceremony ; and the 
other, their aversion to dishonesty. A Nicobarian travelling to a 
distant village, upon business or amusement, passes through many 
towns in his way, without speaking to any one. If he is hungry or 
tired, he goes into the nearest house, and helps himself to what he 
wants, and sits till he is rested,, without taking the smallest notice of 
any of the family, unless he has business or news to communicate. 
Theft or robbery is so very uncommon among them, that a man going 
out, never takes away his ladder, or shuts his door, but leaves it open 
to any body to enter that pleases, without the least apprehension of 
having any thing stolen. Their intercourse with strangers is so fre- 
quent, that they have acquired in general the barbarous Portuguese 
so common all over India ; their language has a sound quite different 
from all others, their words being pronounced with a kind of stop or 
catch in the throat, at every syllable. 
It is said by Mr. Hamilton, that they have no notion of a God, but 
