He was said to be very well off, possessing large numbers of coco palms, but the other staple of wealth (pigs) he has to buy. We presently reached, near the shore, a group of buildings known as _Elpanam_ (The Place).[19] Principal among these were two buildings, in which feasts and meetings take place. While of the same shape as the living-houses, they were much larger in every way. The roof and floor are built on the ground, and then, by the combined efforts of the whole village, are raised to the supports on which they rest. They were constructed inside of laths of areca, closely bound together, and fastened horizontally to a framework covered with grass thatch, a foot or more in thickness. The floors were gratings of split palm wood, but a great portion was planked, and on this solid part a large fireplace was built of clay. In the centre hung a rack, from which the joints of pork are suspended at feast-times, and beneath were placed boards to catch falling fat and grease. Strings of pigs' jaws were hung across the upper part of the roof, and showed the number of animals consumed at the last feast--a ceremony that sometimes lasts a month. The pigs, which are killed for these occasions by being speared through the heart, are doubtless an introduced species, for they attain immense proportions and are of many colours:--black and white, brown, brown and white, etc. The young, however, are all striped when born. Adjacent to these "Town Halls"[20] are the stores of the Burmese traders, some buildings which are equivalent to the hospital of civilisation, and several maternity houses, where women take up their residence shortly before confinement.[21] The starting-point in life, and also the place of departure, is for the Nicobarese of this village one and the same, for next to the house appointed for his birth is another--the "House of Pollution"--to which he is carried to die; and yet a few paces further is the burial-field, with its group of grave-posts, where his body will be bestowed for a time. Not for long will it rest even there, for in a few years the skeleton will be disinterred and cast into the jungle--the skull alone, if he has been a man of some importance in life, being allowed to find in the grave an abiding place. The shores of Kar Nicobar are in places very low, and during bad weather the waves have been known to roll up the beach and flood _Elpanam_ a foot in depth, carrying away canoes, etc. To subdue the sea on these occasions, _tamiluanas_ (medicine-men) and their followers, adorned with garlands, walk in procession along the beach, with devil-destroying rods and leaves, with which they strike the water, and then surround _Elpanam_ with palm leaves, and perform other ceremonies.