as to the marrying age, these figures fairly apply to women. Before marriage free intercourse between the sexes is the rule, though certain conventional precautions are taken to prevent it. Marriages rarely produce more than three children and often none at all. Divorce is rare, unfaithfulness after marriage not common and incest unknown. By preference the Andamanese are exogamous as regards sept and endogamous as regards tribe. The children are possessed of a bright intelligence, which, however, soon reaches its climax, and the adult may be compared in this respect with the civilized child of ten or twelve. The Andamanese are, indeed, bright and merry companions, busy in their own pursuits, keen sportsmen, naturally independent and not lustful, but when angered, cruel, jealous, treacherous and vindictive, and always unstable—in fact, a people to like but not to trust. There is no idea of government, but in each sept there is a head, who has attained that position by degrees on account of some tacitly admitted superiority and commands a limited respect and some obedience. The young are deferential to their elders. Offences are punished by the aggrieved party. Property is communal and theft is only recognized as to things of absolute necessity, such as arrows, pigs’ flesh and fire. Fire is the one thing they are really careful about, not knowing how to renew it. A very rude barter exists between tribes of the same group in regard to articles not locally obtainable. The religion consists of fear of the spirits of the wood, the sea, disease and ancestors, and of avoidance of acts traditionally displeasing to them. There is neither worship nor propitiation. An anthropomorphic deity, Puluga, is the cause of all things, but it is not necessary to propitiate him. There is a vague idea that the “soul” will go somewhere after death, but there is no heaven nor hell, nor idea of a corporeal resurrection. There is much faith in dreams, and in the utterances of certain “wise men,” who practise an embryonic magic and witchcraft. The great amusement of the Andamanese is a formal night dance, but they are also fond of simple games. The bows differ altogether with each group, but the same two kinds of arrows are in general use: (1) long and ordinary for fishing and other purposes; (2) short with a detachable head fastened to the shaft by a thong, which quickly brings pigs up short when shot in the thick jungle. Bark provides material for string, while baskets and mats are neatly and stoutly made from canes and buckets out of bamboo and wood. None of the tribes ever ventures out of sight of land, and they have no idea of steering by sun or stars. Their canoes are simply hollowed out of trunks with the adze and in no other way, and it is the smaller ones which are outrigged; they do not last long and are not good sea-boats, and the story of raids on Car Nicobar, out of sight across a stormy and sea-rippled channel, must be discredited. Honour is shown to an adult when he dies, by wrapping him in a cloth and placing him on a platform in a tree instead of burying him. At such a time the encampment is deserted for three months. The Andaman languages are extremely interesting from the philological standpoint. They are agglutinative in nature, show hardly any signs of syntactical growth though every indication of long etymological growth, give expression to only the most direct and the simplest thought, and are purely colloquial and wanting in the modifications always necessary for communication by writing. The sense is largely eked out by manner and action. Mincopie is the first word in Colebrooke’s vocabulary for “Andaman Island, or native country,” and the term—though probably a mishearing on Colebrooke’s part for Möngebe (“I am an Önge,” i.e. a member of the Önge tribe)—has thus become a persistent book-name for the people. Attempts to civilize the Andamanese have met with little success either among adults or children. The home established near Port Blair is used as a sort of free asylum which the native visits according to his pleasure. The policy of the government is to leave the Andamanese alone, while doing what is possible to ameliorate their condition.
Penal Settlement.—The point of enduring interest as regards the Andamans is the penal system, the object of which is to turn the life-sentence and few long-sentence convicts, who alone are sent to the settlement, into honest, self-respecting men and women, by leading them along a continuous course of practice in self-help and self-restraint, and by offering them every inducement to take advantage of that practice. After ten years’ graduated labour the convict is given a ticket-of-leave and becomes self-supporting. He can farm, keep cattle, and marry or send for his family, but he cannot leave the settlement or be idle. With approved conduct, however, he may be absolutely released after twenty to twenty-five years in the settlement; and throughout that time, though possessing no civil rights, a quasi-judicial procedure controls all punishments inflicted upon him, and he is as secure of obtaining justice as if free. There is an unlimited variety of work for the labouring convicts, and some of the establishments are on a large scale. Very few experts are employed in supervision; practically everything is directed by the officials, who themselves have first to learn each trade. Under the chief commissioner, who is the supreme head of the settlement, are a deputy and a staff of assistant superintendents and overseers, almost all Europeans, and sub-overseers, who are natives of India. All the petty supervising establishments are composed of convicts. The garrison consists of 140 British and 300 Indian troops, with a few local European volunteers. The police are organized as a military battalion 643 strong. The number of convicts has somewhat diminished of late years and in 1901 stood at 11,947. The total population of the settlement, consisting of convicts, their guards, the supervising, clerical and departmental staff, with the families of the latter, also a certain number of ex-convicts and trading settlers and their families, numbered 16,106. The labouring convicts are distributed among four jails and nineteen stations; the self-supporters in thirty-eight villages. The elementary education of the convicts’ children is compulsory. There are four hospitals, each under a resident medical officer, under the general supervision of a senior officer of the Indian medical service, and medical aid is given free to the whole population. The net annual cost of the settlement to the government is about £6 per convict. The harbour of Port Blair is well supplied with buoys and harbour lights, and is crossed by ferries at fixed intervals, while there are several launches for hauling local traffic. On Ross Island there is a lighthouse visible for 19 m. A complete system of signalling by night and day on the Morse system is worked by the police. Local posts are frequent, but there is no telegraph and the mails are irregular.
History.—It is uncertain whether any of the names of the islands given by Ptolemy ought to be attached to the Andamans; yet it is probable that his name itself is traceable in the Alexandrian geographer. Andaman first appears distinctly in the Arab notices of the 9th century, already quoted. But it seems possible that the tradition of marine nomenclature had never perished; that the Ἀγαθοῦ δαίμονος νῆσος was really a misunderstanding of some form like Agdamán, while Νῆσοι Βαρούσσαι survived as Lanka Bālūs, the name applied by the Arabs to the Nicobars. The islands are briefly noticed by Marco Polo, who probably saw without visiting them, under the name Angamanain, seemingly an Arabic dual, “The two Angamans,” with the exaggerated but not unnatural picture of the natives, long current, as dog-faced Anthropophagi. Another notice occurs in the story of Nicolo Conti (c. 1440), who explains the name to mean “Island of Gold,” and speaks of a lake with peculiar virtues as existing in it. The name is probably derived from the Malay Handuman, coming from the ancient Hanuman (monkey). Later travellers repeat the stories, too well founded, of the ferocious hostility of the people; of whom we may instance Cesare Federici (1569), whose narrative is given in Ramusio, vol. iii. (only in the later editions), and in Purchas. A good deal is also told of them in the vulgar and gossiping but useful work of Captain A. Hamilton (1727). In 1788–1789 the government of Bengal sought to establish in the Andamans a penal colony, associated with a harbour of refuge. Two able officers, Colebrooke of the Bengal Engineers, and Blair of the sea service, were sent to survey and report. In the sequel the settlement was established by Captain Blair, in September 1789, on Chatham Island, in the S.E. bay of the Great Andaman, now called Port Blair, but then Port Cornwallis. There was much sickness, and after two years, urged by Admiral Cornwallis,
