In the Andamans and Nicobars: The Narrative of a Cruise in the Schooner "Terrapin"Kloss, C. Boden (Cecil Boden)
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In the Andamans and Nicobars: The Narrative of a Cruise in the Schooner "Terrapin"
Kloss, C. Boden (Cecil Boden)
Andaman and Nicobar Islands (India) -- Description and travel; Natural history -- India -- Andaman and Nicobar Islands
The day's programme during the voyage was simple. We rose before 5 A.M.;
and after a hurried _chota hazri_, rowed ashore the moment it grew at
all light. The next five hours were passed collecting in the jungle; and
then returning on board, after a bath, change, and breakfast, the
preservation of specimens went on until two o'clock; next came tea, then
more work until about 3 P.M., when we once more rowed ashore and sought
for fresh material until darkness set in. Then after another bath and
change came dinner, and by the time the second batch of specimens was
disposed of, we were quite ready for mattress and pillow on deck; for
unless it rained we never slept below. The development of photographs
often kept me up till midnight, since they had to be manipulated in a
small pantry which could only be thoroughly darkened after sunset. I
have seldom been in a warmer place.
Some consideration should be given to the provisioning of a boat when
cruising away from regular supplies for health is largely dependent on
this point.
For so long as flour will keep good it is pleasant to have fresh bread,
but experience on this and other cruises is that it gets full of weevils
after three months in a small boat. While tinned provisions and bottled
fruits are very well for a time, one rapidly tires of them, and then
there is nothing like the old stand-bys of salt beef and pork, ship's
biscuits, rice, etc. Potatoes and onions will keep well for six months,
and "sauerkraut," or Chinese preserved greens, are useful articles. Many
of the birds shot for specimens--on this cruise, megapodes, pigeons, and
whimbrel--form welcome additions to the table, and one gets occasionally
wild pig and deer; while even of such unorthodox animals as squirrels,
the larger kinds--_Sciurus bicolor_ attains almost the size of a hare,
which it much resembles in flavour--are by no means despicable. When we
were under sail, there were always lines towing astern of the vessel,
which often produced bonito, dolphin, barracouta, edible shark, and
other varieties, and we carried a seine, which, when stretched across
the mouth of a tidal creek, was nearly always certain to entangle some
kind of fish in its meshes, while with a casting-net catches of what one
might call "whitebait" were often made.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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