The Travels of Marco Polo Volume II Part 45

CONCERNING THE ISLAND OF NECUVERAN.

When you leave the Island of Java (the less) and the kingdom of Lambri, you sail north about 150 miles, and then you come to two Islands, one of which is called NECUVERAN. In this Island they have no king nor chief, but live like beasts. And I tell you they go all naked, both men and women, and do not use the slightest covering of any kind. They are Idolaters.

Their woods are all of n.o.ble and valuable kinds of trees; such as Red Sanders and Indian-nut and Cloves and Brazil and sundry other good spices.

[NOTE 1]

There is nothing else worth relating; so we will go on, and I will tell you of an Island called Angamanain.

NOTE 1.--The end of the last chapter and the commencement of this I have taken from the G. Text. There has been some confusion in the notes of the original dictation which that represents, and corrections have made it worse. Thus Pauthier's text runs: "I will tell you of two small Islands, one called Gauenispola and the other Necouran," and then: "You sail north about 150 miles and find two Islands, one called Necouran and the other Gauenispola." Ramusio does not mention Gauenispola, but says in the former pa.s.sage: "I will tell you of a small Island called Nocueran"--and then: "You find two islands, one called Nocueran and the other Angaman."

Knowing the position of Gauenispola there is no difficulty in seeing how the pa.s.sage should be explained. Something has interrupted the dictation after the last chapter. Polo asks Rusticiano, "Where were we?" "Leaving the Great Island." Polo forgets the "very small Island called Gauenispola," and pa.s.ses to the north, where he has to tell us of two islands, "one called Necuveran and the other Angamanain." So, I do not doubt, the pa.s.sage should run.

Let us observe that his point of departure in sailing north to the Nicobar Islands was the _Kingdom of Lambri_. This seems to indicate that Lambri included Achin Head or came very near it, an indication which we shall presently see confirmed.

As regards Gauenispola, of which he promised to tell us and forgot his promise, its name has disappeared from our modern maps, but it is easily traced in the maps of the 16th and 17th centuries, and in the books of navigators of that time. The latest in which I have observed it is the _Neptune Oriental_, Paris 1775, which calls it _Pulo Gommes_. The name is there applied to a small island off Achin Head, outside of which lie the somewhat larger Islands of Pulo Nankai (or Nasi) and Pulo Bras, whilst Pulo Wai lies further east.[1] I imagine, however, that the name was by the older navigators applied to the larger Island of Pulo Bras, or to the whole group. Thus Alexander Hamilton, who calls it _Gomus_ and _Pulo Gomuis_, says that "from the Island of Gomus and Pulo Wey ... the southernmost of the Nicobars may be seen." Dampier most precisely applies the name of Pulo Gomez to the larger island which modern charts call Pulo Bras. So also Beaulieu couples the islands of "_Gomispoda_ and Pulo Way"

in front of the roadstead of Achin. De Barros mentions that Gaspar d'Acosta was lost on the Island of _Gomispola_. Linschoten, describing the course from Cochin to Malacca, says: "You take your course towards the small Isles of GOMESPOLA, which are in 6, near the corner of Achin in the Island of Sumatra." And the Turkish author of the _Mohit_, in speaking of the same navigation, says: "If you wish to reach Malacca, guard against seeing JaMISFULAH ([Arabic]), because the mountains of LaMRI advance into the sea, and the flood is there very strong." The editor has misunderstood the geography of this pa.s.sage, which evidently means "Don't go near enough to Achin Head to see even the islands in front of it." And here we see again that Lambri is made to extend to Achin Head. The pa.s.sage is ill.u.s.trated by the report of the first English Voyage to the Indies. Their course was for the Nicobars, but "by the Master's fault in not duly observing the South Star, they fell to the southward of them, _within sight of the Islands of Gomes Polo_." (_Nept. Orient._ Charts 38 and 39, and pp. 126-127; _Hamilton_, II. 66 and Map; _Dampier_, ed. 1699, II. 122; _H. Gen. des Voyages_, XII. 310; _Linschoten_, Routier, p. 30; _De Barros_, Dec. III. liv. iii. cap. 3; _J.A.S.B._ VI. 807; _Astley_, I.

238.)

The two islands (or rather groups of islands) _Necuveran_ and _Angamanain_ are the Nicobar and Andaman groups. A nearer trace of the form Necuveran, or _Necouran_ as it stands in some MSS., is perhaps preserved in _Nancouri_, the existing name of one of the islands. They are perhaps the _Nalo-kilo-cheu_ (_Narikela-dvipa_) or Coco-nut Islands of which Hiuen Tsang speaks as existing some thousand _li_ to the south of Ceylon. The men, he had heard, were but 3 feet high, and had the beaks of birds. They had no cultivation and lived on coco-nuts. The islands are also believed to be the _Lanja balus_ or _Lankha balus_ of the old Arab navigators: "These Islands support a numerous population. Both men and women go naked, only the women wear a girdle of the leaves of trees. When a s.h.i.+p pa.s.ses near, the men come out in boats of various sizes and barter ambergris and coco-nuts for iron," a description which has applied accurately for many centuries. [Ibn Khordadhbeh says (_De Goeje's transl._, p. 45) that the inhabitants of Nicobar (Alankabalous), an island situated at ten or fifteen days from Serendib, are naked; they live on bananas, fresh fish, and coco-nuts; the precious metal is iron in their country; they frequent foreign merchants.--H.C.] Ras.h.i.+duddin writes of them nearly in the same terms under the name of _Lakvaram_, but read NaKAVaRAM opposite LAMURI.

Odoric also has a chapter on the island of _Nicoveran_, but it is one full of fable. (_H. Tsang_, III. 114 and 517; _Relations_, p. 8; _Elliot_, I.

p. 71; _Cathay_, p. 97.)

[Mr. G. Phillips writes (_J.R.A.S._, July 1895, P. 529) that the name Tsui-lan given to the Nicobars by the Chinese is, he has but little doubt, "a corruption of Nocueran, the name given by Marco Polo to the group. The characters Tsui-lan are p.r.o.nounced Ch'ui-lan in Amoy, out of which it is easy to make Cueran. The Chinese omitted the initial syllable and called them the Cueran Islands, while Marco Polo called them the Nocueran Islands."--H.C.]

[The Nicobar Islands "are generally known by the Chinese under the name of _Rakchas_ or Demons who devour men, from the belief that their inhabitants were anthropophagi. In A.D. 607, the Emperor of China, Yang-ti, had sent an envoy to Siam, who also reached the country of the Rakchas. According to _Tu-yen's T'ung-tien_, the Nicobars lie east [west] of Poli. Its inhabitants are very ugly, having red hair, black bodies, teeth like beasts, and claws like hawks. Sometimes they traded with _Lin-yih_ (Champa), but then at night; in day-time they covered their faces." (_G.

Schlegel, Geog. Notes_, I. pp. 1-2).--H.C.]

Mr. Phillips, from his anonymous Chinese author, gives a quaint legend as to the nakedness of these islanders. Sakya Muni, having arrived from Ceylon, stopped at the islands to bathe. Whilst he was in the water the natives stole his clothes, upon which the Buddha cursed them; and they have never since been able to wear any clothing without suffering for it.

[Professor Schlegel gives the same legend (_Geog. Notes_, I. p. 8) with reference to the _Andaman_ Islands from the _Sing-ch'a Sheng-lan_, published in 1436 by Fei-sin; Mr. Phillips seems to have made a confusion between the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. (_Doolittle's Vocab._ II. p. 556; cf. _Schlegel_, l.c. p. 11.)--H.C.]

The chief part of the population is believed to be of race akin to the Malay, but they seem to be of more than one race, and there is great variety in dialect. There have long been reports of a black tribe with woolly hair in the unknown interior of the Great Nicobar, and my friend Colonel H. Man, when Superintendent of our Andaman Settlements, received spontaneous corroboration of this from natives of the former island, who were on a visit to Port Blair. Since this has been in type I have seen in the _F. of India_ (28th July, 1874) notice of a valuable work by F.A. de Roepstorff on the dialects and manners of the Nicobarians. This notice speaks of an aboriginal race called _Shob'aengs_, "purely Mongolian," but does not mention negritoes. The natives do not now go quite naked; the men wear a narrow cloth; and the women a gra.s.s girdle. They are very skilful in management of their canoes. Some years since there were frightful disclosures regarding the ma.s.sacre of the crews of vessels touching at these islands, and this has led eventually to their occupation by the Indian Government. Trinkat and Nancouri are the islands which were guilty.

A woman of Trinkat who could speak Malay was examined by Colonel Man, and she acknowledged having seen nineteen vessels scuttled, after their cargoes had been plundered and their crews ma.s.sacred. "The natives who were captured at Trinkat," says Colonel Man in another letter, "were a most savage-looking set, with remarkably long arms, and very projecting eye-teeth."

The islands have always been famous for the quality and abundance of their "Indian Nuts," i.e. cocos. The tree of next importance to the natives is a kind of Panda.n.u.s, from the cooked fruit of which they express an edible substance called Melori, of which you may read in Dampier; they have the betel and areca; and they grow yams, but only for barter. As regards the other vegetation, mentioned by Polo, I will quote, what Colonel Man writes to me from the Andamans, which probably is in great measure applicable to the Nicobars also! "Our woods are very fine, and doubtless resemble those of the Nicobars. Sapan wood (i.e. Polo's _Brazil_) is in abundance; coco-nuts, so numerous in the Nicobars, and to the north in the Cocos, are not found naturally with us, though they grow admirably when cultivated.

There is said to be sandal-wood in our forests, and camphor, but I have not yet come across them. I do not believe in _cloves_, but we have lots of the wild nutmeg."[2] The last, and cardamoms, are mentioned in the _Voyage of the Novara_, vol. ii., in which will be found a detail of the various European attempts to colonise the Nicobar Islands with other particulars. (See also _J.A.S.B._ XV. 344 seqq.) [See _Schlegel's Geog. Notes_, XVI., _The Old States in the Island of Sumatra._--H.C.]

[1] It was a mistake to suppose the name had disappeared, for it is applied, in the form _Pulo Gaimr_, to the small island above indicated, in Colonel Versteeg's map to Veth's _Atchin_ (1873). In a map chiefly borrowed from that, in _Ocean Highways_, August, 1873, I have ventured to restore the name as _Pulo Gomus_. The name is perhaps (Mal.) _Gamas_, "hard, rough."

[2] Kurz's _Vegetation of the Andaman Islands_ gives four _myristicae_ (nutmegs); but no sandal-wood nor camphor-laurel. Nor do I find sappan-wood, though there is another Caesalpinia (_C. Nuga_).

CHAPTER XIII.

CONCERNING THE ISLAND OF ANGAMANAIN.

Angamanain is a very large Island. The people are without a king and are Idolaters, and no better than wild beasts. And I a.s.sure you all the men of this Island of Angamanain have heads like dogs, and teeth and eyes likewise; in fact, in the face they are all just like big mastiff dogs!

They have a quant.i.ty of spices; but they are a most cruel generation, and eat everybody that they can catch, if not of their own race.[NOTE 1] They live on flesh and rice and milk, and have fruits different from any of ours.

Now that I have told you about this race of people, as indeed it was highly proper to do in this our book, I will go on to tell you about an Island called Seilan, as you shall hear.

NOTE 1.--Here Marco speaks of the remarkable population of the Andaman Islands--Oriental negroes in the lowest state of barbarism--who have remained in their isolated and degraded condition, so near the sh.o.r.es of great civilised countries, for so many ages. "Rice and milk" they have not, and their fruits are only wild ones.

[From the _Sing-ch'a Sheng-lan_ quoted by Professor Schlegel (_Geog.

Notes_, I. p. 8) we learn that these islanders have neither "rice or corn, but only descend into the sea and catch fish and shrimps in their nets; they also plant Banians and Cocoa-trees for their food."--H.C.]

I imagine our traveller's form _Angamanain_ to be an Arabic (oblique) dual--"The two ANDAMANS," viz. The Great and The Little, the former being in truth a chain of three islands, but so close and nearly continuous as to form apparently one, and to be named as such.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Borus. (From a Ma.n.u.script.)]

[Professor Schlegel writes (_Geog. Notes._ I. p. 12): "This etymology is to be rejected because the old Chinese transcription gives _So_--(or _Sun_) _daman_.... The _Pien-i-tien_ (ch. 107, I. fol. 30) gives a description of Andaman, here called _An-to-man kwoh_, quoted from the _San-tsai Tu-hwui_."--H.C.]

The origin of the name seems to be unknown. The only person to my knowledge who has given a meaning to it is Nicolo Conti, who says it means "Island of Gold"; probably a mere sailor's yarn. The name, however, is very old, and may perhaps be traced in Ptolemy; for he names an island of cannibals called that of _Good Fortune_, [Greek: Agathou daimonos]. It seems probable enough that this was [Greek: Agdaimouos Naesos], or the like, "The Angdaman Island," misunderstood. His next group of Islands is the _Barussae_, which seems again to be the Lankha _Balus_ of the oldest Arab navigators, since these are certainly the Nicobars. [The name first appears distinctly in the Arab narratives of the 9th century. (_Yule, Hobson-Jobson_.)]

The description of the natives of the Andaman Islands in the early Arab _Relations_ has been often quoted, but it is too like our traveller's account to be omitted: "The inhabitants of these islands eat men alive.

They are black with woolly hair, and in their eyes and countenance there is something quite frightful.... They go naked, and have no boats. If they had they would devour all who pa.s.sed near them. Sometimes s.h.i.+ps that are wind-bound, and have exhausted their provision of water, touch here and apply to the natives for it; in such cases the crew sometimes fall into the hands of the latter, and most of them are ma.s.sacred" (p. 9).

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Cynocephali. (From the _Livre des Merveilles_.)]

The traditional charge of cannibalism against these people used to be very persistent, though it is generally rejected since our settlement upon the group in 1858. Mr. Logan supposes the report was cherished by those who frequented the islands for edible birds' nests, in order to keep the monopoly. Of their murdering the crews of wrecked vessels, like their Nicobar neighbours, I believe there is no doubt; and it has happened in our own day. Cesare Federici, in Ramusio, speaks of the terrible fate of crews wrecked on the Andamans; all such were killed and eaten by the natives, who refused all intercourse with strangers. A. Hamilton mentions a friend of his who was wrecked on the islands; nothing more was ever heard of the s.h.i.+p's company, "which gave ground to conjecture that they were all devoured by those savage cannibals."

They do not, in modern times, I believe, in their canoes, quit their own immediate coast, but Hamilton says they used, in his time, to come on forays to the Nicobar Islands; and a paper in the _Asiatic Researches_ mentions a tradition to the same effect as existing on the Car Nicobar.

They have retained all the aversion to intercourse anciently ascribed to them, and they still go naked as of old, the utmost exception being a leaf-ap.r.o.n worn by the women near the British Settlement.

The Dog-head feature is at least as old as Ctesias. The story originated, I imagine, in the disgust with which "allophylian" types of countenance are regarded, kindred to the feeling which makes the Hindus and other eastern nations represent the aborigines whom they superseded as demons.

The Cubans described the Caribs to Columbus as man-eaters with dogs'

muzzles; and the old Danes had tales of Cynocephali in Finland. A curious pa.s.sage from the Arab geographer Ibn Said pays an ambiguous compliment to the forefathers of Moltke and Von Roon: "The _Borus_ (Prussians) are a miserable people, and still more savage than the Russians..... One reads in some books _that the _Borus _have dogs' faces; it is a way of saying that they are very brave"_ Ibn Batuta describes an Indo-Chinese tribe on the coast of Arakan or Pegu as having dogs' mouths, but says the _women_ were beautiful. Friar Jorda.n.u.s had heard the same of the dog-headed islanders. And one odd form of the story, found, strange to say, both in China and diffused over Ethiopia, represents the males as _actual_ dogs whilst the females are women. Oddly, too, Pere Barbe tells us that a tradition of the Nicobar people themselves represent them as of canine descent, but on the female side! The like tale in early Portuguese days was told of the Peguans, viz. that they sprang from a dog and a Chinese woman. It is mentioned by Camoens (X. 122). Note, however, that in Colonel Man's notice of the wilder part of the Nicobar people the projecting canine teeth are spoken of.

Abraham Roger tells us that the Coromandel Brahmans used to say that the _Rakshasas_ or Demons had their abode "on the Island of Andaman lying on the route from Pulicat to Pegu," and also that they were man-eaters. This would be very curious if it were a genuine old Brahmanical _Saga;_ but I fear it may have been gathered from the Arab seamen. Still it is remarkable that a strange weird-looking island, a steep and regular volcanic cone, which rises covered with forest to a height of 2150 feet, straight out of the deep sea to the eastward of the Andaman group, bears the name _Narkandam_, in which one cannot but recognise [Script], _Narak_, "h.e.l.l"; perhaps _Naraka-kundam_, "a pit of h.e.l.l." Can it be that in old times, but still contemporary with Hindu navigation, this volcano was active, and that some Brahman St. Brandon recognised in it the mouth of h.e.l.l, congenial to the Rakshasas of the adjacent group?

"Si est de saint Brandon le matere furnie; Qui fu si pres d'enfer, a nef et a galie, Que deable d'enfer issirent, par maistrie, Getans brandons de feu, pour lui faire hasquie."

--_Bauduin de Seboure_, I. 123.

(_Ramusio_, III. 391; _Ham._ II. 65; _Navarrete_ (Fr. Ed.), II. 101; _Cathay_, 467; _Bullet. de la Soc. de Geog._ ser. IV. tom iii. 36-37; _J.A.S.B._ u.s.; _Reinaud's Abulfeda_, I. 315; _J. Ind. Arch._, N.S., III. I. 105; _La Porte Ouverte_, p. 188.) [I shall refer to my edition of _Odoric_, 206-217, for a long notice on dog-headed barbarians; I reproduce here two of the cuts.--H.C.]

CHAPTER XIV.

CONCERNING THE ISLAND OF SEILAN.