We arrived off the village at 11 A.M., and worked in to an anchorage against a land breeze. The junks in whose company we had been at Kondul were already in the harbour--a square indentation, fringed with coral. With a look-out at the masthead we got in without accident, and anchored in a fairly sheltered position, but some distance outside the other vessels. Small streams debouch in either corner of the bay; but the village, which consists of a dozen or more houses, and is the largest on the west coast, lies to the south of the harbour, with the usual accompaniment of numerous coco palms. As a heavy surf was breaking on the reef fronting the houses, we rowed up the bay and landed by a small hut, beside which was a well of good water, and from thence reached the village by a path leading through scrub and many screw-pines. Interviewing the headman, we learnt that a Shom Pe[.n] settlement lay half a day's journey in the interior, and having arranged with Nyam (the headman) to guide us on the morrow, we set out, accompanied by his brother Puchree, on a stroll through the village. This really consists of two settlements--that nearest the bay, Pulo Rotan or Koé, and the other to the south, which at high tide is cut off from the mainland by a marshy channel--Pulo Bábi or Kanal. There are more houses, both round and square than appear from seawards, but several are uninhabited and falling to pieces. Graves, placed between the houses, were marked by peeled sticks and young saplings, on which a foot or so of the branches had been left. The land on which the village stood was of very recent formation, consisting entirely of sand, coral blocks, and _débris_ of the roughest kind. It would seem that the Nicobars are not only an area of elevation (as shown in Kar Nicobar, Trinkat, etc.), but also one of growth, as appears to be the case in the islands where there is a central mountain mass with radiating arms and shore plains; in these the central high land was first elevated, and formed a core for the extension of land by the agency of fringing reefs where the surrounding sea-bottom has only a slight inclination. Of this latter phenomenon Pulo Bábi appears to be an example, since, for some distance inland the shore is flat, and composed of coral sand and _débris_, with a substratum of fresh-looking coral rock. The bay is becoming choked with coral, and between living reef and shore are broad belts of slimy mud, a little lower than some of the coral heads beyond, where the reef, having reached low-water level, has stopped in its growth and died. Meanwhile it is extending outward on its own talus, and at the same time _débris_ and sand are cast continually shoreward, and, with the help of smaller coralline growths, fill up the interstices of the shore coral until a solid bank is formed, which, by further aid from the waves of the sea, and from the land and its vegetation, is raised above high water and in time becomes dry land.