measure peculiar. Adelung thought oner of the dialects of
these islanders similar to some idioms .on the Indo-Chinese
peninsula, but the subject requires further inquiry.
The Nicobar Islanders have . some remarkable customs
connected with sepulture, of which an account may be seen
in the fourth volume of the Asiatic Researches.
The Andaman islands are covered with thick forests, in
which the only quadrupeds yet discovered are wild hogs,
monkeys, and rats: iguanas and various reptiles abound,
and birdslbuild edible nests in caverns and recesses. These
islands, as Lieutenant Colebrooke, who first described them
in modern times, has observed, were known lbng since,
having been mentioned by Marco Polo and by two Mohammedan
travellers of the ninth century, whose narrative was
translated and published by Renaudot. The? passage cited
from this narrative is curious. Beyond these islands 'j^NcjUr
balar, probably Nicobar) lies the—sea of Andaman: the
people on this coast eat human flesh quite raw; their complexion
is black, their hair frizzled, their countenance and
eyes frightful; their feet are very large and almost a cubit in
length, and they go quite naked. They have no embarcatione,
and if they had they would drown all the strangers they could
lay their hands-on.#
The following is the description given of these people by
Lieutenant Colebrooke in the fourth volume of the Asiatic
Researches, and in the narrative of the Embassy-to Ava by
Mr. Symes.
* Compare Symes’s Embassy to Ava, and Lieutenant Colebrooke, Asiatic
Researches, vol. iv.; also Adelung, Mithridates, vol. i., p. 588.—It has been
thought by some that the people of the Andaman Islands are descended from
runaway Negro slaves, or from some Africans, who might accidentally have
been cast on shore from a shipwreck; But this conjecture, besides that it is
unlikely in itself, is. shown to be unfounded by a remark of M. Adelung,
who observes that the Andaman Isles are already mentioned by that name in
the Arab voyages, translated by Renaudot, as early as. the year 850, which is
long before the era of the Portuguese trade in slaves from Mozambique. The
natives were then savages and cannibals; their physical characters were the
same as how. Mr. Colebrooke has given a vocabulary of forty-one words in
the dialects of the Andamaners, which proves it to be a language different
from all others.
“ The natives of the Andaman islands are not more
favoured in the conformation of their bodies than they are
in the endowment ■ ofefeeif minds. In stature they seldom
exceed five feet ; their limbs are ill-formed and slender, their
bodies protuberant; they »have high shoulders and large
heads, and, like the' Africans, they have woolly hair, flat
D0s#S> 'and thick lips; their «yes are:small and red, their
skin of a deep while their ?©ocmtenances exhibit
thë^ëÉteetei'of wretchedness and ferocity.' They go quite
naked, and daub themselves over with mud to keep off the
inseétsj and fill their woolly hair with «ipnabar^
They are very ferocious, and make no attempt, fe cultivate
the ground, but live on fee accidental supplies of food which
if e and sea aflbrd them Their language, which is
Said to be a polysyllabic one, is rather smooth than guttural.
Like the -nations of Africa, theÿ are fond, of rude dances,
and they are said to have pleasing melodies.”
P&fcigraph 2*—“Negro1 Races of Lasso, Luzon, and other
Islands in the Philippine Archipelago. ?
Black woolly-haired tribes have long been known among
fee inhabitants of the interior of the Penang Islands in the
Archipelago of the Philippines, where they occupy rocky
mountainous regions in the inland parts. One of the small
islands is named from them “ Isla de los Ne g r o s i n other
islands they are termed “ Negritos del Monte.’* They are
called Aigta and Inagta, which, according to Don Francisco
Garcia de Torres, means Blacks. Igolote is another appellation
given to them. We have, numerous descriptions of these
people in the writings of Catholic missionaries who have
resided in the Philippine Islands, It appears that there are
two races of Blacks in the interier of fee Philippine Islands.
The following account was taken from the narrative of the
Abbate Bernardo de la Fuente.
v « The Negroes of the Philippine Islands are of two races.
One of them is supposed in these countries to be descended
from fee Malabars or Sepoys, because, although their skin