The little village of four houses lies on its eastern shore, fronted by a coral-reef that offers but little impediment to a landing-party: one tall pole, with bunches of palm leaf, stood on the beach--the last we met with. The houses were all of quadrangular form, but with a peculiar feature about the roofs; for the slope from apex to eaves, instead of being straight, was in some markedly rounded, and in others the curve ran unbrokenly across the top from edge to edge. They were thatched with the leaves of the nipah palm, and the side walls, 2 to 4 feet in height, were built of rough-hewn planks laid horizontally, or of slabs of bamboo split and flattened out. The doors were closed by _chicks_ of palm leaf, which in the daytime were propped out to shade the interior from the sun. The natives soon overcame their distrust of us, and one evening "Shongshire," the headman, and others from the village, came on board. The former was a stately old gentleman, in spite of his top-hat, and somewhat resembled our old acquaintance, "Friend of England." With him was another old man of a most vivacious temperament, who gave us information in a very graphic manner as we all sprawled, chatting, on the cabin roof. "There were only about a dozen people in the harbour," he said, "although in his boyhood many lived there; all however, were now dead from sickness and the 'orang bubu.' The former, he believed, was caused by eating turtle, and a kind of large fish that appeared near the shore at that period. The latter (apparently) were evil spirits that eat men, and are let loose by a wizard."[72] Although the belief in evil spirits is quite as strong as in the central group, there is a great falling-off both in the elaboration and in the abundance of the instruments employed in exorcising them. In none of the houses was there either a large figure or a picture, or more than one or two of those minor charms which are met with in such abundance at Nankauri, while outside the dwellings the only representative of the signs and warnings to demon trespassers to "Keep off the grass," so numerous in that place, was a rudely-carved post daubed with paint. The dead here, once buried, are left to rest in peace, and the somewhat loathsome process of digging up and cleaning the bones is not gone through. It is probable that all this is a case of desuetude rather than the original absence of custom, and that such decay of ceremonial is due to the little value of public opinion, which is of no weight now that the population is so small. Taking into account that such religious accessories as they do possess, and that similar articles in Great Nicobar, together with the architectural type, etc., occur also at Nankauri, it is to be inferred that there was a time when these people in no way differed in observances from the inhabitants of that locality, who still retain in full the paraphernalia by which they outwardly mark the practice and maintenance of their superstitions.