In the Andamans and Nicobars Part 15

"The headman, who was of the darkest complexion yet met with--a dull chocolate--spoke a little Malay. All were clothed--in far more garments than the Nicobarese--and generally very dirty.

"Most of these people were afflicted with elephantiasis in various stages--none seriously, however. Nicobar water is reported to be bad; but, considering the state of the water-holes that the Shom Pe[.n] paths lead to, no surprise can be felt that those who use such a supply should be suffering from this disease. Often the water of the coast natives is unsatisfactory enough in quality, but having plenty of coconuts, they hardly ever use it for drinking purposes.

"After we had finished with the people we gave them presents of cotton and sheath-knives, and then followed a path leading to the Dagmar through forest of a very open character. A walk of half a mile brought us to the bank of the river, here about 30 to 35 yards wide. There was very little current, owing to a sandbar across the mouth, which the natives say is dry at half-tide. The banks were jungle covered, and free from mangroves.

"Before leaving the village we bought some fowls, and a pair of young monkeys, said to be only three or four months old. They were imprisoned in a pig cage, and seemed half-starved, and were certainly very frightened as they sat clinging convulsively to each other.

"There is clear water, 300 or 400 yards wide, before Kopenheat, with a reef on either side where the sea breaks heavily at high tide, but the anchorage is not so good as at Kunyi or Nyur."

CHAPTER XIV

GREAT NICOBAR--WEST AND SOUTH COASTS

"Domeat"--Malay Traders--Trade Prices--The Shom Pe[.n] Language-- Place Names--Pulo Babi--The growth of Land--Climbing a Palm Tree-- Servitude--Population--Views on Marriage with the Aborigines-- Towards the Interior--A Shom Pe[.n] Village--The Inhabitants-- Canoe-building--Barter--The West Coast--South Bay--Walker Island-- Chang-ngeh--Up the Galathea River--Water--We leave the Nicobars and sail to Sumatra.

We hove up anchor at 8 A.M.--the hour at which a breeze usually sprang up--and sailed for Pulo Babi, a few miles down the coast, taking as pa.s.senger an old man named Domeat who had been staying at Kopenheat.

He produced a number of _chits_ for our perusal, and from one we learned that it was Domeat--now a toothless, but st.u.r.dy old gentleman, with nutcracker jaws and a benevolent expression--who brought news of the recovery of the body of Captain Elton, commander of the station gunboat, who was drowned in the surf while attempting to land at Trinkat Sambelong[80] village, on the east coast, in March 1881.

Most of the letters were written by Asiatics, and from them it seemed that the last Malay vessel to call at the islands arrived in 1877. Many formerly came to purchase coconuts, but this people, like our own nation, has been ousted from the trade by the inhabitants of China and the Indian Empire.

According to our informant, the Chinese pay the coast natives one packet of tobacco (value 2-1/2d.) for three bundles of rattan, while the Nicobarese, who act merely as middlemen, and have the export trade in their hands, only give the Shom Pe[.n] one packet for six bundles! The bush aborigines have no settled dwelling-places, but wander about, although they have good gardens established in various localities. Their language is quite distinct from the Nicobarese,[81] but each knows enough of the others' speech to make themselves mutually understood.

Asked, however, whether further south we could get a man who knew the Shom Pe[.n] language, Domeat replied: "When one of us sees a Shom Pe[.n]

he runs away, and when a Shom Pe[.n] sees a Nicobar man he spears him!"[82]

Misunderstandings frequently occurred when we talked to him about the various places on the coast. The name given on the chart is often not known to the natives: the Chinese have another name, which is not given on the chart, and the natives have a third, but are generally familiar with that used by the traders.

I believe the following to be correct:--

_Chart._ _Trade Name._ _Native Name._ Pulo Kunyi, Pulo Kunyi, Pulo Kunyi.

Casuarina Bay, ---- Teh-hmeul.

Dagmar R., ---- Ta-ti-al.

Kopenheat, Telok Bintang, Kopenheat.

Taeangha, Pulo Nyur, Ka.s.sandun.

Koe, Pulo Rotan, Koe.

---- Pulo Babi, Ka.n.a.l.

Henpoin, Pulo Bharu, Henpoin.

Megapode Island, Pulo Kotah, ---- Henhoaha, Pulo Paha, Henhoa.

Chang-ngeh, Pulo Chaura, Chang-ngeh.

Galathea R., ---- Sakheer.

---- ---- Badoi.

We arrived off the village at 11 A.M., and worked in to an anchorage against a land breeze. The junks in whose company we had been at Kondul were already in the harbour--a square indentation, fringed with coral.

With a look-out at the masthead we got in without accident, and anch.o.r.ed in a fairly sheltered position, but some distance outside the other vessels. Small streams debouch in either corner of the bay; but the village, which consists of a dozen or more houses, and is the largest on the west coast, lies to the south of the harbour, with the usual accompaniment of numerous coco palms.

As a heavy surf was breaking on the reef fronting the houses, we rowed up the bay and landed by a small hut, beside which was a well of good water, and from thence reached the village by a path leading through scrub and many screw-pines.

Interviewing the headman, we learnt that a Shom Pe[.n] settlement lay half a day's journey in the interior, and having arranged with Nyam (the headman) to guide us on the morrow, we set out, accompanied by his brother Puchree, on a stroll through the village.

This really consists of two settlements--that nearest the bay, Pulo Rotan or Koe, and the other to the south, which at high tide is cut off from the mainland by a marshy channel--Pulo Babi or Ka.n.a.l. There are more houses, both round and square than appear from seawards, but several are uninhabited and falling to pieces. Graves, placed between the houses, were marked by peeled sticks and young saplings, on which a foot or so of the branches had been left.

The land on which the village stood was of very recent formation, consisting entirely of sand, coral blocks, and _debris_ of the roughest kind.

It would seem that the Nicobars are not only an area of elevation (as shown in Kar Nicobar, Trinkat, etc.), but also one of growth, as appears to be the case in the islands where there is a central mountain ma.s.s with radiating arms and sh.o.r.e plains; in these the central high land was first elevated, and formed a core for the extension of land by the agency of fringing reefs where the surrounding sea-bottom has only a slight inclination.

Of this latter phenomenon Pulo Babi appears to be an example, since, for some distance inland the sh.o.r.e is flat, and composed of coral sand and _debris_, with a substratum of fresh-looking coral rock. The bay is becoming choked with coral, and between living reef and sh.o.r.e are broad belts of slimy mud, a little lower than some of the coral heads beyond, where the reef, having reached low-water level, has stopped in its growth and died. Meanwhile it is extending outward on its own talus, and at the same time _debris_ and sand are cast continually sh.o.r.eward, and, with the help of smaller coralline growths, fill up the interstices of the sh.o.r.e coral until a solid bank is formed, which, by further aid from the waves of the sea, and from the land and its vegetation, is raised above high water and in time becomes dry land.

Such action depends on the tides, slope of the sea-bottom, and the relation of one part of the sh.o.r.e to another in regard to contour and position, but particularly on the currents, which in some places would acc.u.mulate material and in others remove it.

The crowns of the palm trees were frequented by flocks of the black and white nutmeg-pigeon (_Carpophaga bicolor_), an uncommon bird in such a situation. Of those we shot, several lodged in the trees and were fetched down by the natives, who climbed with the ankles joined by a belt or piece of rattan, and who, when lifting the feet, did not clasp the trunk with the arms as we should, but placing one round it, pressed against it with the other hand.

We found two Shom Pe[.n] youths in the village, who seemed to be in a state of easy servitude, and were used for such work as carrying nuts or fetching water.

There were between twenty and thirty men and boys dwelling here, and the skipper (with whom the people were more communicative than with us) said, only four women! Although, by going to Naukauri Harbour, said Puchree, they could obtain wives,--who, however, refused to leave their own homes,--he lamented the almost total impotence of himself and neighbours in the way of offspring. Asked if they ever married Shom Pe[.n] women, he said, "No, they didn't like them; they were dirty and didn't wash"; and when we suggested that he should catch (_tangkap_) a young one, and first train her for a year or two, and teach her manners--"Too much trouble."

"_March_ 25.--We met Nyam and a companion at his house about six o'clock, and after a walk of half a mile reached the bank of a little river some 30 feet wide. Here lay a canoe, and paddles being produced we travelled up-stream, wading now and again over the shallows, until, having progressed a mile or so, we landed on the same bank at a spot where a second path commenced. This we followed for 2 miles in a northerly direction, crossing by the way the stream itself and a little tributary by bridges of sapling, and so arrived at the Shom Pe[.n]

village.

"We had already seen two kinds of buildings amongst these people; here we met with a third.

"The houses--five in number, and recently constructed--stood on piles about 12 feet high; in several cases a live tree being built in. These supports were strengthened by diagonal struts--a most uncommon form of scaffolding among savages. The floors were made of saplings placed side by side, and the side walls, about 3 feet high, of split nibong palm; while the roofs, which just afforded head-room at the apex, were roughly thatched with whole palm leaves, piled on b.u.t.t downwards.

"Each house was about 8 feet square, and at one end of each a small platform was attached, on which was the fireplace, with cooking apparatus of bark sheets covered with large green leaves, to prevent charring. In a corner of each hut was a shelf of split sticks, and a long trough of split and hollowed palm trunk sloped from ground to floor for the dogs and other animals to mount by. The ladders for human use were about 18 inches wide, with cross-pieces fastened on by rattan bindings.

"The village lay at the foot of a hill, above which the sun appeared between nine and ten o'clock, and was bounded on the other side by the bed of a stagnant brook. The trees about the houses were festooned with bundles of rattan, and the ground round them was littered deeply with the refuse sc.r.a.pings. A few chickens and a miserable pariah cur or two wandered about, and several little pigs were caged in the huts.

"This party seemed less well-to-do than the others we had seen, for their only dress was cotton _kissats_ and waistcloths, and while possessing several pieces of bark cloth, in which they wrapped themselves at night, they had apparently no further clothing. Strings of coloured beads were worn about the neck, and their ear-lobes were distended by wooden plugs from 1 to 2 inches in diameter.

"They were of a most apathetic disposition. A few words were exchanged with our guides, whom the women immediately supplied with lime and sireh, and then, renewing their own quids, sat crouching in the doorways of the huts, or perhaps attended by request to the head of a neighbour who might be troubled with a parasitical itching. Although free from elephantiasis, the body of each individual was covered with the scaly symptoms of ringworm--_tinea circinata tropica_.

"After we had measured the whole party, there was sufficient light to photograph the village, to which, in the dark shade of the jungle, I gave an exposure of ten minutes. The portraits of the natives were taken under difficulties, for the only rays of sunlight that filtered through the branches s.h.i.+fted slowly with the rays of the sun, so that by the time the subject was posed and focussed, he was generally outside the patch of suns.h.i.+ne.

"We bought all the little property visible, and then returned to the schooner by path and canoe, having found that the so-called 'half-day's'

journey resolved itself into a matter of little more than an hour.

"Later in the day we strolled through the coast village to watch the progress towards completion of a partially-finished canoe we had purchased. With a little supervision it was only a short afternoon's work for three or four men to cut and fit, by means of their _daos_, the stem and stern, cross-pieces, outriggers, and float, and quickly do all the fastening required with tough strips of rattan.

"Our guides of the morning were rewarded with a _sarong_ apiece and we purchased with rupees a pair of captive nutmeg-pigeons--somewhat uncommon pets--and a couple of grey-headed parrots (_P. caniceps_) that had been obtained as fledglings by the villagers.

"Once again on board we found canoes arriving with loads of coconuts and numbers of fowls. Old shoes were the princ.i.p.al articles demanded, but the skipper got six chickens for a white linen coat. Our estimable captain is actuated by a commercial spirit; his invariable greeting to a new arrival is 'Ah, _hang sudah datang_! _apa hang bawa_?'--'Ah, you've come! what are you bringing?'"

"_March_ 26.--Spent an hour on sh.o.r.e, and then left with the breeze at 7 A.M. Sailing slowly down the coast we pa.s.sed Henpoin, Pulo Kotah, and Henhoa, at all of which places are many coco palms, with one or two houses visible. Two or three miles inland a range of hills runs down the coast, and must form the eastern slope of the Galathea Valley; until their foot is reached, the country is low and level.

"Off South Point the wind became very light at midday, and subsequently we worked up and down against a strong north-westerly tide, barely maintaining our position. After a small advance, at 10 P.M. we were back again where we had been at noon, so, getting soundings of 9 fathoms, we anch.o.r.ed for the night."