As we were making for the land in what is called Komios Bay, near the village of the same name (situate according to our observations in 9° 37' 32'' N. Lat. and 92° 43' 42'' E. Long.), a number of stalwart natives approached us from the forest, one of whom, who called himself Captain Wilkinson, proved to be the most intelligent and graceful of their number. He was extremely eager to give us a lot of information respecting the more southerly islands of the Nicobar Archipelago, with which the inhabitants of the southern coast appear to carry on more extensive commerce than those on the northern shore. During the N.E. monsoons, canoes occasionally start hence for the islands of Teressa, Bampoka, and Chowry. Wilkinson himself once visited these islands in the barque _Cecilia_ of Moulmein, with the view of fetching cocoa-nuts. The natives of Teressa, however, showed such determined hostility to the captain of the vessel, that Wilkinson advised him to abandon the island without further delay, ere the intended shipment of cocoa-nuts was completed. Another English captain, named Iselwood, seems once to have carried over some natives of Teressa to Kar-Nicobar, and afterwards taken them back again. There does not exist, however, any regular commercial intercourse between Kar-Nicobar and the remaining islands of the Archipelago. The boats of the natives are much too small, and unsuitable to admit of their undertaking voyages to any distance, unless for some very important purpose, such, for instance, as bringing pottery ware from the island of Chowry, or Chowra, where alone in the Archipelago that manufacture is carried on. The Frenchman, Tigard, affirmed that the natives constantly spoke of another race of men inhabiting the interior, who have but one eye in the middle of the forehead, who possess no fixed habitation, but pass the night among the trees like wild beasts, and subsist upon fruits and roots dug up in the forest. This superstition meets with the more ready acceptance among the natives, as not one of them has ever penetrated into the interior. All their villages lie along the shore, as far as the tract of coral sand reaches and the cocoa-nut is thriving. Here the frugal native finds all that is necessary to satisfy his very limited requirements. The cocoa-palm and the screw-pine (_Pandanus odoratissima_), whose fruit forms his chief article of food, as also the betel shrub and the Areca palm, which furnish their cherished masticatory, grow here, and the coral sand, which can be worked into the most excellent lime for building purposes, is only used by them for the purpose of obtaining that ingredient so prejudicial to the teeth, which serves to impart to the betel the proper relish.