On the other hand they approach nearer to the Burmese in their mental characters; in their frank, independent spirit, inquisitiveness, and kindness towards their women, who enjoy complete social equality, as in Burma; and lastly in their universal belief in spirits called _iwi_ or _siya_, who, like the _nats_ of Indo-China, cause sickness and death unless scared away or appeased by offerings. Like the Burmese, also, they place a piece of money in the mouth or against the cheek of a corpse before burial, to help in the other world. One of the few industries is the manufacture of a peculiar kind of rough painted pottery, which is absolutely confined to the islet of Chowra, 5 miles north of Teressa. The reason of this restriction is explained by a popular legend, according to which in remote ages the Great Unknown decreed that, on pain of sudden death, an earthquake, or some such calamity, the making of earthenware was to be carried on only in Chowra, and all the work of preparing the clay, moulding and firing the pots, was to devolve on the women. Once, a long time ago, one of these women, when on a visit in another island, began, heedless of the divine injunction, to make a vessel, and fell dead on the spot. Thus was confirmed the tradition, and no attempt has since been made to infringe the "Chowra monopoly[568]." All things considered, it may be inferred that the archipelago was originally occupied by primitive peoples of Malayan stock now represented by the Shom Pen of Great Nicobar, and was afterwards re-settled on the coastlands by Indo-Chinese and Malayan intruders, who intermingled, and either extirpated or absorbed, or else drove to the interior the first occupants. Nicobar thus resembles Formosa in its intermediate position between the continental and Oceanic Mongol populations. Another point of analogy is the absence of Negritoes from both of these insular areas, where anthropologists had confidently anticipated the presence of a dark element like that of the Andamanese and Philippine Aeta. FOOTNOTES: [492] Here E. T. Hamy finds connecting links between the true Malays and the Indonesians in the Bicols of Albay and the Bisayas of Panay ("Les Races Malaiques et Americaines," in _L'Anthropologie_, 1896, p. 136). Used in this extended sense, Hamy's _Malaique_ corresponds generally to our _Malayan_ as defined presently. [493] Ethnically Malayo-Polynesian is an impossible expression, because it links together the Malays, who belong to the Mongol, and the Polynesians, who belong to the Caucasic division. But as both undoubtedly speak languages of the same linguistic stock the expression is permitted in philology, although, as P. W. Schmidt points out, "Malay" and "Polynesian" are not of equal rank: and the combination is as unbalanced as "Indo-Bavarian" for "Indo-Germanic"; it is best therefore to adopt Schmidt's term _Austronesian_ for this family of languages (_Die Mon-Khmer Voelker_, 1906, p. 69).