* * * * * Once in every five years the villages in turn remove all their pigs, and keep them in sties in the jungle. The surroundings of the village are then offered to the public for cultivating fruit and vegetables, and the people from other villages arrive and make gardens, which are open; there is no need for fencing, since there are no pigs to cause damage. The reason for all this is that after demolishing the _ñá-kopáh_ (sacrifice to the dead), during the festival of _Kana Awn_, the yams and other vegetables and fruit with which they are loaded are scattered about the houses, and grow abundantly; to obtain some profit from this unplanned result this custom has been introduced. The people in general have their large vegetable plantations at a distance, but for immediate use there are some smaller gardens near the village. The _tamiluanas_ informed the people that in consequence of the flourishing condition of these latter, the devils were angry, and might cause the island to be drowned by a deluge, and that to save themselves they should uproot part of the plants. Accordingly, the greater portion of the yams and other vegetables were destroyed; some of the people doing it willingly, others with discontent. The Kar Nicobarese seem to hold much the same belief with regard to an eclipse as do the Chinese and some of the peoples of India. They think the moon is actually being swallowed by a serpent, and throughout the night both young and old refrain from sleep, and occupy themselves in driving the serpent away. Providing themselves with tins and planks, they beat them, causing a tremendous din, and shout, "Alas! alas! do not devour it, let the moon alone and go away." * * * * * In the buying and selling of the larger canoes the natives of Chaura act as middlemen--seeming to possess a monoply of intermediation in this business as they do of pottery making.[214] The canoes are not made at Chaura; there are no suitable trees on that small island to construct them from. The Chaura people obtain them--very cheaply--from the central groups (where many are made, and where others, obtained from the southern group, are also sold), and sell them again to the Kar Nicobarese, making four or five times in the transaction what they themselves pay.[215]