OUR METHOD OF LANDING

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flung the boat, its contents, and ourselves, far up the beach. Fortunately our guns and cartridges were made up into bundles with waterproof canvas, so no harm was done beyond losing a rowlock.

From the incident we learned a lesson, and thereafter, had the proverbial New Zealander been on the beach in the early mornings, he might have seen a little boat approach the shore, with a blue-clad, brown-skinned Malay and a couple of white men in puris naturalibus. Outside the belt of surf, the latter would jump overboard, and, seizing favourable opportunities, wade to and fro with sundry bundles. Presently the dinghy would return, with a solitary occupant, to a schooner in the bay, while the others, after assuming a simple toilet and a peculiar sporting equipment, would disappear from his view, leaving the Antipodean observer alone on the shore. Although a little farther from the village, the best landing-place when the sea is rough is on the stretch of sand next to that adjacent to Mūs, and just to westward and inside the rocky point that separates the two strips of beach.

Sometimes we shot in the scrub and plantations surrounding the village, and sometimes we went a few miles along the bay towards Sáwi, now walking on the beach, now along the brow of the cliffs. The view from these last was very beautiful: on the one hand a forest of palms, pandanus and casuarina trees, on the other a line of waving grass; and below, the blue sea breaking in snowy rollers on a golden beach.

At times we met parties of natives proceeding from village to village in picturesque groups-the men carrying nothing but a dáo, their warm-brown stalwart figures relieved only by the red kissát and white chaplet of pandanus with which their hair was bound; and the women draped in scarlet cotton, and adorned with chains of rupees and numerous silver bangles.

All would stare Nicobars, where one degrees of rank are

stolidly, and pass in silence; for in the man is as good as the next, and no known, there are no words of greeting

must be obeyed. The mission house was then burnt down, and a fence erected round the spot, inside which no native will step. It is unholy ground, they say, where the devil first landed; for, until the missionaries brought him with them, he had never been in the island, or knew where it was. I was told that a day is now set apart in the year when all the inhabitants assemble to drive the devil out of the island."

On the fourth morning of our visit our sympathy was due to Mr Solomon on the occasion of his wife's death-an event that occurred with some suddenness as the result of an apoplectic fit. One sequel to this was, that on the following night the entire village was engaged in expelling the spirit of the deceased from the neighbourhood with much ceremony and noise.

Kar Nicobar has an area of about 50 square miles, with a surface that is exceedingly level, as the highest point it attains is barely 200 feet above the sea-level; only in the north does the coast rise in low cliffs, and all round the shore is a fringe of coral-reef.

The geological formation consists of a foundation of serpentine, on which rest thick clay beds and layers of sandstone, exposed in parts, and in some places overlaid by upheaved coral banks, the whole having acquired a covering of sandy alluvium and drift, which was deposited before upheaval, with an additional layer of vegetable débris since accumulated.

With the exception of an indigenous coco palm zone, where coralline alluvium has formed, the beach forest of Casuarinas, Barringtonias, Ficus, Pandani, Hibiscus, Calophyllums, and other characteristic species, and irregular strips of inland forests, containing canebrake and bamboo, with Terminalias and Sterculias, the whole island appears to be covered with stretches of coarse lallang grass, dotted with tall screw - pines (Pandanus mellori), bearing the large globular fruit that supplies the inhabitants with their staple food; or with the natives' plantations of coconuts, betel, plantains, and yams. The nature of the forests depends entirely on the character of the soil and on the composition of the underlying rock.