A piece of sandal wood, of good quality, was brought off to the ship by one of the natives; he stated that large quantities of it could be procured, as the tree grew abundantly in the mountains. He gave it the usual Indian appellation of _Chandana_.[159] In some brackish pools I collected several small living species of the _Cerethium_; and about the banks a great number of a small crab, remarkable from one of the claws being greatly disproportioned to the size of the other parts of the animal, and entirely different in colour. When I first beheld them, I mistook them for small crabs running away with the claws of larger ones. They are difficult to catch, from the exceeding rapidity of their motions, and escape, on the slightest movement or noise being made, into their subterraneous dwellings in the sand. The body and feet of the animal are bluish black, with a few white marks across, and the large claw is of a light or occasional darker red colour. The natives call them _Biong, po_. They are seen in great numbers about the pools, but are not eaten by the natives. I procured several specimens, which I preserved in spirits. On being placed in strong rum, they survived for the space of full three minutes; and if more than one was placed in the same bottle, they would fight and pull the claws off each other in their death agonies. Near the village, several boys were playing a game with Areka-nuts, called _Mein-achu_, in some degree resembling our game at marbles. Four nuts were piled up in form of a pyramid, twelve such forming a row; a nut was then fillipped off with some degree of force against the heaps, from a distance of about three yards. If the thrower succeeds in destroying one of the pyramids, he renews his throw at the others, always at the distance where his nut remained, until he misses, when the next player takes his turn: the game thus continuing until all the pyramids are thrown down.