the name of several islands in Asia, lying at the entrance of the gulf of Bengal. The largest of these islands is about 40 miles long and 15 broad, and the inhabitants are said to be a harmless sort of people, ready to supply the ships that stop there with provisions. The south end of the great Nicobar is by Captain Ritchie placed in east longitude 94° 23' 30"; and we collect from Mr. Rennell's Memoir, that it is within the 12th degree of north latitude.

Of these islands very little that can be depended upon is known in Europe. Of the northernmost, No. 242, which is called Carnicobar, we have indeed, in the second volume of the Asiatic Researches, some interesting information respecting both the produce and natural history of the country, and the manners of its inhabitants. The author of the memoir is Mr. G. Hamilton, who, in his account of this island, says, "It is low, of a round figure, about 40 miles in circumference, and appears at a distance as if entirely covered with trees; however, there are several well-cleared and delightful spots upon it. The soil is a black kind of clay, and marshy. It produces in great abundance, and with little care, most of the tropical fruits, such as pine-apples, plantains, papayas, cocoa-nuts, and areca-nuts; also excellent yams, and a root called cachu. The only four-footed animals upon the island are, hogs, dogs, large rats, and an animal of the lizard kind, but large, called by the natives tolouqui; these frequently carry off fowls and chickens. The only kind of poultry are hens, and those not in great plenty. There are abundance of snakes of many different kinds, and the inhabitants frequently die of their bites. The timber upon the island is of many sorts, in great plenty, and some of it remarkably large, affording excellent materials for building or repairing ships.

"The natives are low in stature but very well made, and surprisingly active and strong; they are copper-coloured, and their features have a cast of the Malay; quite the reverse of elegant. The women in particular are extremely ugly. The men cut their hair short, and the women have their heads shaved quite bare, and wear no covering but a short petticoat, made of a sort of rush or dry grass, which reaches half way down the thigh. This grass is not interwoven, but hangs round the person something like the thatching of a house. Such of them as have received presents of cloth-petticoats from the ships, commonly tie them round immediately under the arms. The men wear nothing but a narrow strip of cloth about the middle, in which they wrap up their privities so tight that there hardly is any appearance of them. The ears of both sexes are pierced when young; and by squeezing into the holes large plugs of wood, or hanging heavy weights of shells, they contrive to render them wide, and disagreeable to look at. They are naturally disposed to be good humoured and gay, and are very fond of fitting at table with Europeans, where they eat everything that is set before them; and they eat most enormously. They do not care much for wine, but will drink bumpers of arak as long as they can see. A great part of their time is spent in feasting and dancing. When a feast is held at any village, every one that chooses goes uninvited, for they are utter strangers to ceremony. At these feasts they eat immense quantities of pork, which is their favourite food. Their hogs are remarkably fat, being fed upon the cocoa-nut kernel and sea-water; indeed all their domestic animals, fowls, dogs, &c., are fed upon the same. They have likewise plenty of small sea-fish, which they strike very dexterously with lances, wading into the sea about knee deep. They are sure of killing a very small fish at 10 or 12 yards distance. They eat the pork almost raw, giving it only a hasty grill over a quick fire. They roast a fowl, by running a piece of wood thro' it," it, by way of spit, and holding it over a brisk fire until the feathers are burnt off, when it is ready for eating, in their taste. They never drink water; only cocoa-nut milk and a liquor called soura, which oozes from the cocoa-nut tree after cutting off the young sprouts or flowers. This they suffer to ferment before it is used, and then it is intoxicating; to which quality they add much by their method of drinking it, by sucking it slowly through a small straw. After eating, the young men and women, who are fancifully dressed with leaves, go to dancing, and the old people surround them smoking tobacco and drinking soura. The dancers, while performing, sing some of their tunes, which are far from wanting harmony, and to which they keep exact time. Of musical instruments they have only one kind, and that the simplest. It is a hollow bamboo about 2½ feet long and three inches in diameter, along the outside of which there is stretched from end to end a single string made of the threads of a split cane, and the place under the string is hollowed a little to prevent it from touching. This instrument is played upon in the same manner as a guitar. It is capable of producing but few notes; the performer however makes it speak harmoniously, and generally accompanies it with the voice.

Their houses are generally built upon the beach in villages of 15 or 20 houses each; and each house contains a family of 20 persons and upwards. These habitations are raised upon wooden pillars about 10 feet from the ground; they are round, and, having no windows, are like bee-hives, covered with thatch. The entry is through a trap-door below, where the family mount by a ladder, which is drawn up at night. This manner of building is intended to secure the houses from being infested with snakes and rats; and for that purpose the pillars are bound round with a smooth kind of leaf, which prevents animals from being able to mount; besides which, each pillar has a broad round flat piece of wood near the top of it, the projecting of which effectually prevents the further progress of such vermin as may have passed the leaf. The flooring is made with thin strips of bamboo, laid at such distances from one another as to leave free admission for light and air; and the inside is neatly finished and decorated with fishing lances, nets, &c.

The art of making cloth of any kind is quite unknown to the inhabitants of this island; what they have is got from the ships that come to trade in cocoanuts.

They purchase a much larger quantity of cloth than is consumed upon their own island. This is intended for the Choury market. Choury is a small island to the southward of theirs, to which a large fleet of their boats sails every year about the month of November, to exchange cloth for canoes; for they cannot make these themselves. This voyage they perform by the help of the sun and stars, for they know nothing of the compass.

In their disposition there are two remarkable qualities. One is their entire neglect of compliment and ceremony; and the other, their aversion to dishonesty. A Caricobarian travelling to a distant village, upon business or amusement, passes through many towns in his way without speaking to any one; if he is hungry or tired, he goes into the nearest house, and helps himself to what he wants, and sits till he is rested, without taking the smallest notice of any of the family unless he has business or news to communicate. Theft or robbery is so very rare amongst them, that a man going out of his house never takes away his ladder or shuts his door, but leaves it open for any body to enter that pleases, without the least apprehension of having anything stolen from him.

Their intercourse with strangers is so frequent, that they have acquired in general the barbarous Portuguese so common over India; their own language has a sound quite different from most others, their words being pronounced with a kind of stop, or catch in the throat, at every syllable.

They have no notion of a God, but they believe firmly in the devil, and worship him from fear. In every village there is a high pole erected with long strings of ground-rattans hanging from it, which, it is said, has the virtue to keep him at a distance. When they see any signs of an approaching storm, they imagine that the devil intends them a visit, upon which many superstitious ceremonies are performed. The people of every village march round their own boundaries, and fix up at different distances small sticks split at the top, into which split they put a piece of cocoa-nut, a wisp of tobacco, and the leaf of a certain plant: whether this is meant as a peace offering to the devil, or a scarecrow to frighten him away, does not appear.

When a man dies, all his live stock, cloth, hatchets, fishing-lances, and in short every moveable thing he possessed, is buried with him, and his death is mourned by the whole village. In one view this is an excellent custom, seeing it prevents all disputes about the property of the deceased amongst his relations. His wife must conform to custom by having a joint cut off from one of her fingers; and if she refuses this, she must submit to have a deep notch cut in one of the pillars of her house.

I was once present at the funeral of an old woman. When we went into the house which had belonged to the deceased, we found it full of her female relations; some of them were employed in wrapping up the corpse in leaves and cloth, and others tearing to pieces all the cloth which had belonged to her. In another house hard by, the men of the village, with a great many others from the neighbouring towns, were fitting drinking soura and smoking tobacco. In the mean time two stout young fellows were busy digging a grave in the sand near the house. When the women had done with the corpse, they set up a most hideous howl, upon which the people began to assemble round the grave, and four men went up into the house to bring down the body; in doing this they were much interrupted by a young man, son to the deceased, who endeavoured with all his might to prevent them, but finding it in vain, he clung round the body, and was carried to the grave along with it; there, after a violent struggle, he was turned away and conducted back to the house. The corpse being now put into the grave, and the lashings which bound the legs and arms cut, all the live-stock which had been the property of the deceased, consisting of Nicobar, about half a dozen hogs, and as many fowls, was killed, and flung in above it; a man then approached with a bunch of leaves fluck upon the end of a pole, which he swept two or three times gently along the corpse, and then the grave was filled up. During the ceremony, the women continued to make the most horrible vocal concert imaginable: the men said nothing. A few days afterwards, a kind of monument was erected over the grave, with a pole upon it, to which long strips of cloth of different colours were hung.

"Polygamy is not known among them; and their punishment of adultery is not less severe than effectual. They cut, from the man's offending member, a piece of the foreskin proportioned to the frequent commission or enormity of the crime.

"There seems to subsist among them a perfect equality. A few persons, from their age, have a little more respect paid to them; but there is no appearance of authority one over another. Their society seems bound rather by mutual obligations continually conferred and received; the simplest and best of all ties."

It is our wish to take all opportunities of laying before our readers every authentic fact which can throw light upon the philosophy of the human mind. In this narrative of Mr Hamilton's respecting the natives of Carnicobar, there is however one circumstance at which we stumble. It is known to the learned, that the philosophers of Greece and Rome, as well as the magi of Persia, admitted two self-existent beings, a good and an evil (see Polytheism); but we never before read of any people who had no notion of a God, and yet firmly believed in the devil. We could give instances of men worshipping the evil principle from fear, and neglecting the worship of the benevolent principle, from a persuasion that he would do them all the good in his power without being bribed by sacrifices and oblations; but this is the only instance of which we have ever heard, of a people, under the influence of religion, who had no notion of a God! As good is at least as apparent in the world as evil, it appears to us to be very unnatural to admit an evil and deny a good principle, that we cannot help thinking that Mr Hamilton, from his ignorance of the language of Carnicobar, (which he acknowledges to be different from most others), has not a perfect acquaintance with the religious creed of the natives; and that they believe in a good as well as in an evil principle, though they worship only the latter, from a persuasion, that to adore the former could be of no advantage either to him or to themselves.