S.W. monsoons or rainy season (when the wind comes from "yonder," quoth Dr. Crisp, and pointed with his finger to the southward), the inhabitants of Kar-Nicobar hold their chief festival, which lasts fourteen days, and is called Oïlere.

They have a similar festival at the end of the damp season, or N.E. monsoon, to which the pigs, which play quite a conspicuous part in it, impart an entirely peculiar character. Several weeks before the commencement of this fête, a large number of these unclean but useful animals are confined in small stalls, whence they are released on the feast-day, and set loose in a well-fenced space, where they are teased and pricked with lances by all the courageous, or rather mischievous, youth of the island. The Nicobarians seem to attach special importance to the swine being driven wild, and themselves engaged in a regular struggle with the infuriated animal, in the course of which severe wounds are by no means of rare occurrence. We ourselves saw several young natives, who a few days previously had been severely injured in a similar contest with some enraged pigs. When this anything but æsthetic spectacle has lasted some time, the pigs are killed, roasted on the fire, and devoured by the combatants and spectators.

A not less strange and even more barbarous festival is that which is held about the same time as the one just mentioned.

This consists in exhuming the bones of all those who have died during the year elapsed since the last N.E. monsoon, and have been interred in a sort of cemetery called "Cuyucupa."[11] They next bring these bones into a hut, seat themselves in a circle around the ghastly mementos, and shriek and howl as at the day on which the relation died. While this scene of lamentation is going on, a lighted cigar is usually stuck into the bony mouth of the grisly skull, after which the latter is consigned to the grave again. The rest of the bones however are either thrown into the deep sea or hid far in the forest, while at the same moment, as a farther evidence of sorrow, a number of cocoa-palms are cut down, and their fruit scattered to the winds. By such symbols they apparently wish to express their overwhelming grief, their weariness of existence, and their indifference to the most valued gifts of nature, so that they would even deprive themselves of the most universally necessary of the means of subsistence—were it not that, owing to the readiness with which the sea-shore palm is propagated, the nuts thus scattered at random, in all the indifference to sublunary considerations incidental to a paroxysm of grief, speedily strike root, and after a few years lift up their heads again in the forest, at once ornamental and nutritious.

At all these festivals the natives assemble in the various villages, and at these seasons spend days and weeks with each other. Earlier visitors to Kar-Nicobar estimate the number of villages on the island at about six or seven only. The natives on the other hand gave us the names of the following thirteen: Arrong (or Arrow), Sáoui, Moose, Lapáte, Kinmai, Tapóimai, Chukchuitche, Kiukiuka, Tamalu, Páka, Malacca, Komios, and Kankéna, which all together would hardly number much above 100 huts, and about 800 or 900 inhabitants.

Southward of our anchorage we fell in with a small stream, which near its embouchure on the beach was lost in a sand-bank. Some of the members of the Expedition explored it in a very small flat-bottomed boat, a Venetian gondola, which was transported across the bar in order to admit of its being sculled up the river. At first it was found to be about 2 ¹⁄₂ feet deep, by about 12 to 14 yards in width; the general direction of its very sinuous course being towards E.S.E. All around the forest presented a scene to which perhaps only the fantastic whimsicality of certain theatrical forest sceneries might furnish a dim resemblance. Along the steep bank of the river rose to a height of nearly 100 feet the slender Nibong palm, adorned with blossoms and clusters of fruit, and close adjoining the graceful Catechu palm. Gigantic forest trees, with thick squat trunks, extended their shady masses of foliage far over the stream; screw-pines towering up from the scaffold-like arrangement of their numerous roots, were reflected from

the glassy bosom of the water; clumps of bamboo, absolutely alive with butterflies; nymph-like aquatic plants, mossy green banks, and tree-ferns with indescribably graceful corollæ, all combined here to form a landscape of the most enchanting richness, in the water, on the shore, and in the air. Suspended over the whole scene, partly in leaf, partly in bloom, a gigantic garland of climbing and creeping plants, in living cords of every variety of thickness, rose in a lofty arch above the limpid element, interlaced and girt round with thousands of blooming and flourishing parasites! Then, too, from amid the mysterious gloom started forth the strangest voices and cries, without our being able to descry the animals themselves. In the water, which was perfectly sweet to the taste, swarmed multitudes of fish of from one to four inches in length. After rowing about one nautical mile and a half up the stream, some rapids and rocks prevented our further progress, the stream itself being but twelve feet wide. A little further to the east occurs a similar small river, which however had even less water, and at its mouth is yet more sanded up and inaccessible than that above described.

After we had lain for six days at anchor on the N.W. coast of Kar-Nicobar, and were once more casting about how to make out our long-desired excursion through its almost impermeable forests, we suddenly perceived in the distance upon the beach two men in European dress, with muskets

upon their shoulders, who, conducted by some absolutely naked natives, speedily approached us. One, a fine-looking, well-formed young man of about 20, addressed us in French, saying he was supercargo of the Sardinian brig Giovannina of Singapore, and was occupied in taking in a cargo of cocoa-nuts upon the southern shore of the island. The natives had been so unsettled by the arrival of a war-ship, that they loudly affirmed a pirate ship had made its appearance, which would rob and destroy them all; whereupon the most anxious of their number entreated the few whites who fortunately happened to be among them to start immediately for the north side of the island, where the Colossus lay at anchor, so as at all events to ascertain what was to be their fate. In the course of the conversation which sprung up between ourselves and the two strangers, we found that the supercargo was a Frenchman, born at St. Denis in the island of Bourbon, and was named Auguste Tigard, while his companion was a Sardinian. They were both singularly pale and embarrassed on first falling in with us, apparently from surprise and delight at finding themselves so unexpectedly in the society of white men at so solitary a spot; ere long however they felt themselves more at their ease, visited the frigate, were provided with clothes, medicines, and wine, and at a later period were of much use to us in our intercourse with the natives. Tigard remarked that the sugar-cane, which at present grows wild on the island, could, judging by

his own personal experience, be very profitably grown for the production of sugar, as also that tobacco, cotton, and rice thrive in the most conspicuous manner.

At present the cocoa-palm is the sole plant which is cultivated by the natives of Kar-Nicobar. It supplies them