SKETCHES AT THE NICOBARS. 
263 
the oscillations of the needle, which he thought was symp¬ 
tomatic of its distaste to those black devils, again pointing 
with his finger to the osseous remains of his ancestors lying 
scattered and dishonored. Captain White was evidently in 
liquor, as it was unpleasant to be in his immediate vicinity, 
I therefore gave him his conge. I may here mention that 
the horror of the natives for these burial grounds is exces¬ 
sive. No inducement could prevail upon them to go there at 
night, and during the day they look all about them most 
carefully to see if there are no black devils to terrify them. 
I found it therefore my safest plan to take up my quarters as 
much as possible during the day in this burial ground, and 
by that means I got rid of their ceaseless importunities, 
which became at last a nuisance perfectly intolerable. On 
the same day after our dinner we called in John Bull and Jim 
Booth, two Nicobar Elders. r t hey came into my tent in full 
Nicobar travelling dress, that is, a black hat and about a 
fathom of cloth of two inches in breadth ; whatever length is 
superfluous whisks out behind, and I observed that the fast 
young men and the bloods rather affected the flaunting tail, 
which when they walk has a majestic effect, but when they 
run whisks about horizontally in most serpentine waves. Jim 
Booth and John Bull were accommodated with chairs, and 
as I had hinted to my servant, an old mussulman, who had 
appeared horribly disgusted with them, and rather looked 
down up on me for tolerating them—that upon his attention 
to serving them depended his being assassinated or not, he 
worked away to help them as if they had been most formi- 
dable burra sahibs. As I found that, according to Nicobar 
etiquette, our two guests did not take off their hats, and as 
I had seen sundry atticies proceeding from mysterious cor¬ 
ners, I determined upon having an inspection. 1 therefore 
begged Jim Booth most politely to lend me his castor, which 
he willingly accorded, and certainly the contents were most 
extraordinary,—a small bottle of salts, two dozen of pills, a 
handful of tobacco, an old seidlitz case containing letters, a 
roll of pandan leaf for the manufacture of cigars, and a lan- 
gootie. I then begged John Bull’s—his contained the tobac¬ 
co and the pandan leaf, two langooties, one a very old one, 
several very suspicions pieces of old cloth, a couple of old 
hooks, three or four rusty tenpenny nails, a piece of ambergris, 
and about half a catty of bird’s nest done up in such filthy old 
duds that I thought, as I unrolled one after another, I should 
at last develop a mummy. What precious soup this would 
make, thought I, as I came to the last roll and struck upon 
