_Nicobar._--Inhabitants copper-coloured, with oblique eyes, yellowish sclerotica, small flat noses, large mouth, thick lips, and black teeth; undersized. Hair strong and black; beard scanty. Ears large and perforated. Occipito-frontal profile brakhykephalic, the hinder part of the head being flat and compressed. The Nicobars are the people who, from the year A.D. 1647, until a recent period, had the credit of having tails, like those of cats, which they moved in a similar manner. This arose from a mistake of Keoping, a Swede, who mistook for a caudal appendance a stripe of cloth hanging down behind. That there is no real prolongation of the _os coccygis_ is expressly stated by Fontana. The people _now_ supposed to present this anatomical peculiarity are a tribe from the interior of Africa. The evidence of Keoping as to the cannibalism of the Nicobarians is more conclusive than his assertion as to their tails. Having "sent a boat on shore with five men, who did not return at night, as expected, the day following a larger boat was sent, well manned, in quest of their companions, who, it was supposed, had been devoured by the savages, their bones having been found strewed on the shore, the boat taken to pieces, and the iron of it carried away." Their huts are raised from the ground, and entered by a ladder; inhabited by more families than one, and ornamented with boar-skulls. Marriages are easily formed, and easily dissolved.[79] The dead are buried; and for every person that dies a cocoa-nut tree is cut down; and his name is never afterwards mentioned. The changes of the moon are productive of their great festivities; and it is by these only that they reckon; seven to each monsoon. At the beginning of the north-east monsoon a brisk trade, carried on by means of large canoes, begins with the other islands. The extent of this, and the amount to which it has introduced European articles of commerce is considerable; indeed, in the Carnicobar Island the Portuguese has partially become a _lingua franca_. The habit of artificially flattening the back of the head is of more importance. It is a custom "to compress with their hands the occiput of the new-born child, in order to render it flat. By this method the hair remains close to the head; as nature intended it, and the upper fore-teeth very prominent out of the mouth." This is, apparently, so exclusively an American custom that its presence here is remarkable; and it is equally remarkable that the only other approach to it, is to be found in these parts. It is mentioned as being a practice of certain Arakan tribes. The most characteristic disease is the _Cochin-leg_, a form of elephantiasis; arising, perhaps, from the extent to which their aliment is either fish or pork, to the exclusion of other sorts of animal food. Instances, too, of longevity, are said to be rare. Malabar and Bengal settlers to a considerable extent make the Nicobarians a _mixed_, rather than a pure population.