class="loi1">Flower Boat on the Wusung at Shanghai

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The earliest visitants of whom we have any certain information to this cluster of islands (situated in the Bay of Bengal, between 6° 50′ and 9° 10′ N., and 93° and 94° E.), appear to have been Arabian traders, who, on their

voyages to Southern China, landed on these islands, then known as Megabalu and Legabalu, on the first occasion in 851, and on the second in 877 of the Christian era. Abu-Zeyd-Hassan, one of these adventurers, gave a circumstantial account of these voyages, which has been translated into French, and published by Eusebius Renaudot.[1]

After the Cape of Good Hope was doubled in 1497, the Nicobars were chiefly frequented by voyagers in East Indian seas, but without any such visits having in the least contributed to enlarge our information respecting a group so important by geographical position.

In 1602, Captain Lancaster, commander of an English ship, passed ten days on the Nicobars, during which he hardly visited the southern islands, Great and Little Nicobar, but kept to the small island of Sombrero, of the northern cluster, now called Bampoka. He there found trees of such circumference and height, as would serve for the construction of the largest ships. Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, Koeping, a Swede, made his appearance at the Nicobars. Happening to be on board a Dutch vessel, which touched in 1647 at one of the islands, he thought he perceived among the inhabitants certain men furnished with caudal appendages, whereas it was their peculiar clothing, which consists of a long narrow piece of woven stuff, wound

round the body and then left to hang loosely, which gave rise to such a report. With the arrival in Indian waters of Dampier, that daring but most trustworthy of navigators, the information respecting these islands first becomes more definite. He landed in the north-western Bay of the largest of these, to which he assigned the latitude 7° 30′ N., and gave a most extensive narrative of his adventurous career from the moment he abandoned the corsair-craft he had brought from Europe to seek for assistance on the Nicobars, to the period when, after braving a tremendous storm in a canoe, along with seven of his companions in misfortune he landed half dead on the northernmost point of Sumatra about 1706.

In 1708, Captain Owen, another English shipmaster, paid an involuntary visit to this Archipelago, his ship having been stranded on the uninhabited island of Tillangschong, whence he escaped with his crew to the islands Ning and Souri, only four miles to the westward, apparently what is now known as Nangkauri. For the first time history now records an outrage of which the natives were guilty towards the strangers.

It would appear that the captain, after having experienced an exceedingly friendly reception, laid down his knife, upon which one of the islanders, very possibly out of curiosity, laid hold of it, pushed the owner aside, and ultimately possessed himself of the knife. On the following day, as Owen was taking his mid-day meal under a tree, he was set upon and killed by several of the natives, who shot him

down with their arrows; on the other hand the crew, consisting of sixteen persons, were furnished with canoes and provisions, so that without experiencing any further ill-treatment they were so fortunate as to reach Junkseilan.

The first essay towards a settlement of the Nicobar Islands was made by the Jesuits in 1711, upon the most northerly island of the group, Kar-Nicobar. They succumbed however to the noxious influences of the climate, and the few neophytes speedily sank back into heathendom.

The second attempt at colonization by Europeans took place in 1756, when Lieutenant Tanck, a Dane, after taking possession of the entire group in the name of his sovereign, the King of Denmark, named the islands "Frederiks Oerne" (Frederick Islands), and founded the first colony on the northern side of Great Nicobar, or Sambellong. In the year 1760 this was transferred by the followers of Tanck to the island of Kamorta, but here too after a short time the experiment failed, owing to the unhealthiness of the climate.

In 1766, fourteen Moravian Brethren were settled on Nangkauri, with the view of extending the influence of the Danish East India Company. The want of information respecting the necessary conditions under which this colony was called into existence, was in all probability the cause of its speedy declension. Within less than two decades the majority of these settlers had fallen under the baneful influence of the climate.

On 1st April, 1778, the Austrian vessel Joseph and

Theresa, commanded by Captain Bennet, landed on the N.E. side of Kar-Nicobar, or New Denmark. This vessel had been commissioned by the Imperial Government to select, in the name of H.M. Joseph II., Austrian plantations and commercial stations on the farther side of the Cape of Good Hope. Of this remarkable expedition nothing more has been handed down to us than is related by excellent Nicolas