little at first sight seems fabulous. Navarrete describes the natives as almost black, with red hair, which he naturally observes is very remarkable, es cosa bien particular; and he adds that they are cannibals. The present race of inhabitants are certainly among the gentlest and most humane of all savage tribes, yet his account is perhaps not so erroneous as it appears.

The Andaman islands, the nearest group to the Nicobars, are inhabited by a fierce and intractable race of black cannibals, from whose coast no shipwrecked mariner has ever returned. They are said to be descended from some Mozambique negroes, wrecked there in a Portugueze ship early in the sixteenth century. If this account of their origin be authentic, they may have acquired the habit of eating human flesh as they fell into wilder habits of life; or they may have brought it with them, if any of them, which would be not unlikely, belonged to the execrable hordes of the Giagas. Lieutenant Colebrooke* however questions the authenticity of the tradition, not having been able to discover in what early author it is noticed. The colour and the woolly hair of the Andaman islanders may refer as probably to an Australasian as to an African origin. The natives of Papua are black, and woolly-haired, and both Sonnini and Rochon tell us that they use a powder which makes the hair appear of a fiery red. Now the cannibal race in the Nicobars may easily be believed to have come from the nearest group, and if they retained the customs and fashions of their ancestors, upon this supposition, Navarrete's account would be as true in all its parts, as it appears erroneous. At present the inhabitants of the two groups are hostile to each other, and Captain Hamilton tells us that in his time, (the end of the seventeenth century,) the fiercer tribe used annually to invade their neighbours. One singular custom seems to imply a connection between them at some former time: both preserve the skulls of wild boars in their houses; Mr. Fontana says that in the Nicobars they form the most valuable article of furniture, and Lieutenant Colebrooke observes that the Andamaners suspend them from the roofs. This custom, for which no reason is assigned, must originate in some superstition, and that superstition must have been common to both people.

The Nicobars are said by Mr. Hamilton to have been peopled from Pegu; persons, he says, who are acquainted with both languages, recognize a great resemblance. Dr. Leyden could perceive little or no connection in the short vocabulary which Mr. Fontana has given; but he did not notice Mr. Hamilton's observation, that the words are pronounced with a kind of stop or catch in the throat, at every syllable. This, which the traveller considers

* Asiatic Researches, vol. iv. 8vo edition, p. 405.

to

to be a mode of syllabic speaking, (like the syllabic reading of the Madras schools,) seems rather to imply that the language is monosyllabic, and the people, according to Dr. Leyden's classification, of Indo-Chinese race. The proof therefore of their extraction from Pegu, may perhaps be in their language, though certainly there is nothing in their manners to support it. The Moravians made little progress in the native tongue, and communicate nothing concerning it. Mr. Haensel complains not of the usual difficulty, that confluent pronunciation which all persons perceive in a language with which they are imperfectly acquainted, and which renders it so arduous a task to analyse a savage dialect into its constituent parts, but that the people were too lazy to talk, and too fond of betel to articulate: words they seemed to think a troublesome effort, where a sign could answer the purpose, and when they spoke, the betel rendered their speech so indistinct, that one sputtering sound could scarcely be distinguished from another. The necessity of acquiring the native tongue was less urgent, because the corrupt Portugueze which 'passes current in India, was understood there. Mr. Hamilton accounts for this by the frequent intercourse of the islanders with the Portugueze; but during the last hundred and fifty years they must have had more intercourse with Dutch, English, French, and Danes; and the language of the first European conquerors in India has more probably remained there since the sixteenth century, when the Portugueze traded with many countries, which have since that time been neglected. No other traces of their intercourse remain. The natives indeed seem rather to be retrograde than progressive. They had acquired a little skill in pottery, one of the first arts which savages attain, but some chance maladies carried off several of the persons who were thus employed, and the manufacture was immediately given up as unlucky. Some of their customs also tend to reduce them to a more savage state than that in which they exist at present. Every moveable thing, living or dead, which a man possessed, is buried with him. In one view,' says Mr. Hamilton, this is an excellent custom, seeing it prevents all disputes about the property of the deceased among his relations:' but a few broken heads would be a less evil than this continual destruction of property and live stock. Some law of succession is coeval with property, and the practice originates in superstition, not in any design of preventing quarrels. A cocoa tree also is cut down for every person that dies, instead of being planted for every child that is born! Like most savages, they strive to forget the dead, and therefore destroy what has belonged to them; the name of the deceased is never mentioned, even if it be repeatedly asked: all memory of their ancestors is thus precluded, and tradition can scarcely exist among them.

6

These

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These superstitions are unfavourable to every improvement. It is among the priests that civilization must always begin, unless it be superinduced by conquerors or missionaries; so long therefore as the priests are mere knaves and jugglers, so long must the people continue savages. One writer says of these islanders, that they have no notion of a God, but that they believe firmly in the devil, and worship him from fear. They believe in a superior being for whom they have no name, simply using the word Knallen, which signifies above, or on high; they believe that this being is good and will not hurt them, but wherein his goodness consists, says Mr. Haensel, they neither have, nor seem to wish to have, any understanding, nor ever trouble themselves about him. When the missionaries endeavoured to convince them of their sinfulness and the necessity of redemption, they were opposed by a singular opinion; the islanders insisted that they were good by nature, and never did any thing wrong; and for the truth of this latter assertion they appealed confidently to the missionaries themselves. It was founded upon a notion which reconciled this complacent belief in their own original goodness with any crimes they nright think proper to commit. The world, they affirm, was not made by him who is above, but by the Eewee, whom the missionaries readily identify with Satan; and whenever any thing wrong is committed by them, they charge it upon the Eewee, and acquit themselves as being mere, and therefore irresponsible, agents.

All diseases which baffle their modes of cure are accounted for by possession. Exorcism of course becomes the remedy,—and instead of laying the devil in the Red Sea, they put him afloat upon a little raft decorated for that purpose, tow him out to sea and turn him adrift, in the belief that if he be not driven on shore within three days, he must die: but as it is perfectly well understood that wherever he lands he will continue his practices, the inhabitants of that part of the coast where the raft happens to be stranded, resent the unwelcome importation by sending a challenge to the village from whence the devil was shipped off. A day of battle is appointed, and by a whimsical arrangement, this battle serves to compound all private quarrels, and terminates litigation more effectually than a court of law. Champions are chosen on both sides to belabour each other upon the affair of the devil, and notice is given that all who wish to have their disputes settled, may take this opportunity. The causes usually to be decided are cases of theft, crim. con. and such other offences as occur among a rude, but not a ferocious people. The business is conducted with due solemnity; the captains or foremen of all the neighbouring villages are present, and inspect the long sticks, which are the only weapons used in their judicial combats. One combat

at

at a time is decided; the two champions if it be the devil's affair, or the plaintiff and defendant in a private plea, enter the lists, and lay on upon each other's back and head, till one of them cries 'hold, enough!'—in this manner all parties get well thrashed, he who gives in is cast in his suit, and Mr. Haensel assures us that peace is restored, all being perfectly satisfied with the justice of the decision. Satisfied they may be that it is without appeal, but the injured man who is beaten, and believes the decision to be judicial, must in strict reasoning ascribe it to the Eewee; and the worst effect which results from this cudgel-work is, that it must confirm the opinion that the affairs of this world are governed by a capricious or evil being.

Of their other superstitions little is known. Mr. Fontana observed that at the change of the moon they decorate their hats with palm branches and festoons made of slips of plantain leaves; their persons are ornamented in the same manner, and the day is spent in singing, dancing, and drunkenness. This indicates a kind of lunar worship, which indeed the old Jesuit missionaries expressly impute to them. During an eclipse, they beat all their gongs with the utmost violence, and hurl their spears into the air, to frighten away the demon who is devouring the celestial body: no superstitious notion seems to be so widely prevalent as this; it is found among the savages of America and Africa, as well as in Asia, and wherever it exists, the same practice accompanies it.

The most hideous of their ceremonies is an annual feast of the dead. They dig the skulls out of all the graves, a stake being planted in each exactly over the head of the corpse, to show where it lies; this office is performed by the women who are nearest of kin to the deceased: they scrape off the flesh if it be not consumed, wash the bones with the milk of fresh cocoa nuts, and rub them with saffron; they then wrap the skull in new cloth, replace it in the grave, and replant the stake, which is hung with trappings in honour of the dead. The whole night is spent in these horrid rites; in the morning they sacrifice hogs, and smear themselves with the blood, and some among them eat the flesh raw. A more loathsome feast of the dead is celebrated among some of the North American tribes, and a more dreadful ceremony of watering the graves' among the atrocious barbarians of western Africa. Their jugglers are called paters, an appellation manifestly borrowed from the Portugueze missionaries. They are knaves, who, being as expert in slight-of-hand as the performers in India, make a more profitable exhibition by acting as physicians, and professing that their art is miraculous. This kind of roguery leads to the deepest guilt. When their common mummery fails, which necessarily happens whenever the disease is too violent to be

cured

cured by imagination, the juggler, to save his own credit, protests that some person has by witchcraft sucked all the power of healing out of the patient's body. His next business is to discover the culprit, and woe be to those who have offended him, for the wretch upon whom he thinks proper to fix, is without farther inquiry put to death!

This is the only case in which the Nicobarmen discover any trace of ferocity. It is not indeed without some share of reason that they say they are good by nature, for a better-natured or more inoffensive people are no where to be found. The Moravians say of them that they were always ready to do a kind action to their friends, and that their dispositions were generally gentle, except when jealousy, or other provocations roused them, and then the Danish soldiers experienced that they knew how to revenge themselves. The missionaries found them uniformly peaceable, generous, and affectionate.

'We used,' says Mr. Haensel,' to buy of them what we wanted, and pay with tobacco, the common medium. Even when they had nothing to sell they would come and fetch their portion of tobacco, which we never refused them as long as we had any, till by the non-arrival of the ship we were left entirely without it. We therefore told the captain of the village, that as we had no more tobacco the people need not bring us any more provisions, for we had nothing to give in exchange. The captain did as we desired, yet on the very next day we were supplied more plentifully than ever with the things we wanted. They would not even wait for pay, but hung up their fruit and meat about the house and went away. We called after them and told them how we were situated. Their answer was, when' you had plenty of tobacco you gave us as much as you could spare; now though you have got no more of it, we have provisions enough, and you shall have as much as you want, as long as we have any, till you get more tobacco. This promise they most faithfully performed.'

Nothing can be more simple than their state of society, which indeed differs only in the slightest possible degree from perfect savage independence. No person acknowledges any controul; there are however in every village men who claim the rank of captain or omjah, as being cleverer than their neighbours, and one of them is acknowledged as the omjah karru, or great master of the house. The only privilege which this confers is, that when a ship arrives he is entitled to go first on board, and make the bargain if they have any thing to barter. They are commonly good-natured men, disposed to make and preserve peace among the common people; and it is a remarkable proof of the peaceable disposition of these islanders, and of their docility, that rank among them, such as it is, is yielded to intellectual and not to bodily powers. Mr. Fontana asserts that there are casts among the natives; no other writer hints

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