In the Andamans and Nicobars: The Narrative of a Cruise in the Schooner "Terrapin"Kloss, C. Boden (Cecil Boden)
History
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
"Each house was about 8 feet square, and at one end of each a small
platform was attached, on which was the fireplace, with cooking
apparatus of bark sheets covered with large green leaves, to prevent
charring. In a corner of each hut was a shelf of split sticks, and a
long trough of split and hollowed palm trunk sloped from ground to floor
for the dogs and other animals to mount by. The ladders for human use
were about 18 inches wide, with cross-pieces fastened on by rattan
bindings.
"The village lay at the foot of a hill, above which the sun appeared
between nine and ten o'clock, and was bounded on the other side by the
bed of a stagnant brook. The trees about the houses were festooned with
bundles of rattan, and the ground round them was littered deeply with
the refuse scrapings. A few chickens and a miserable pariah cur or two
wandered about, and several little pigs were caged in the huts.
"This party seemed less well-to-do than the others we had seen, for
their only dress was cotton _kissáts_ and waistcloths, and while
possessing several pieces of bark cloth, in which they wrapped
themselves at night, they had apparently no further clothing. Strings of
coloured beads were worn about the neck, and their ear-lobes were
distended by wooden plugs from 1 to 2 inches in diameter.
"They were of a most apathetic disposition. A few words were exchanged
with our guides, whom the women immediately supplied with lime and
sireh, and then, renewing their own quids, sat crouching in the doorways
of the huts, or perhaps attended by request to the head of a neighbour
who might be troubled with a parasitical itching. Although free from
elephantiasis, the body of each individual was covered with the scaly
symptoms of ringworm--_tinea circinata tropica_.
"After we had measured the whole party, there was sufficient light to
photograph the village, to which, in the dark shade of the jungle, I
gave an exposure of ten minutes. The portraits of the natives were taken
under difficulties, for the only rays of sunlight that filtered through
the branches shifted slowly with the rays of the sun, so that by the
time the subject was posed and focussed, he was generally outside the
patch of sunshine.
"We bought all the little property visible, and then returned to the
schooner by path and canoe, having found that the so-called 'half-day's'
journey resolved itself into a matter of little more than an hour.
"Later in the day we strolled through the coast village to watch the
progress towards completion of a partially-finished canoe we had
purchased. With a little supervision it was only a short afternoon's
work for three or four men to cut and fit, by means of their _dáos_, the
stem and stern, cross-pieces, outriggers, and float, and quickly do all
the fastening required with tough strips of rattan.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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