Andaman Islands

ANDAMAN ISLANDS, a group of islands in the Bay of Bengal. Large and small, they number 204, and lie 590m. from the mouth of the Hugli, 12om. from Cape Negrais in Burma, the nearest point of the mainland, and 340m. from the northern extremity of Sumatra. The extreme length of the Andaman group is 219m. with an extreme width of 32 miles. The main part of it consists of a band of five chief islands, so closely adjoin ing and overlapping each other that they have long been known collectively as "the Great Andaman." Four narrow straits part these islands. Attached to the chief islands are, on the extreme north, Landfall Islands; Interview Island, off the west coast of the Middle Andaman; the Labyrinth Island off the south-west coast of the South Andaman; Ritchie's (or the Andaman) archipelago off the east coast of the South Andaman and Bara tang. Little Andaman, roughly 26m. by 16, forms the southern extremity of the whole group and lics3 Im. south of Rutland Island across Duncan Passage, in which lie the Cinque and other islands, forming Manners Strait, the main commercial highway between the Andamans and the Madras coast. Besides these are a great number of islets lying off the shores of the main islands. The land area of the Andaman Islands is 2,508 sq. miles.

Topography.

The islands forming Great Andaman consist of a mass of hills enclosing very narrow valleys, the whole covered by an exceedingly dense tropical jungle. The hills rise, especially on the east coast, to a considerable elevation; the highest being Saddle Peak (2,400ft.) in the North Andaman. Little Andaman, with the exception of the extreme north, is practically flat. There are no rivers and few perennial streams in the islands. The scenery is everywhere strikingly beautiful and varied, and the coral beds of the more secluded bays in its harbours are conspicu ous for their exquisite colouring. The coasts of the Andamans are deeply indented, giving existence to a number of safe harbours and tidal creeks, often surrounded by mangrove swamps. The chief of several capacious harbours is Port Blair in South Andaman: and there are a number of good anchorages along the coast.

Geology.—The Andaman islands form part of a lofty range of submarine mountains, room. long, running from Cape Negrais in the Arakan Yoma range of Burma, to Achin head in Sumatra. This range separates the Bay of Bengal from the Andaman sea; and it contains much that is geologically characteristic of the Arakan Yoma, and formations common also to the Nicobars and to Sumatra and the adjacent islands. The older rocks are Early Tertiary or Late Cretaceous, but there are no fossils to indicate age. The newer rocks, common also to the Nicobars and Sumatra, are chiefly in Ritchie's archipelago and contain radiolarians and f oraminif era.

Climate.

Rarely affected by a cyclone, though within the influence of practically every one that blows in the Bay of Bengal, the Andamans are of the greatest importance because of the ac curate information relating to the direction and intensity of storms which can be communicated from them better than from any other point in the bay, to the.vast amount of shipping in this part of the Indian ocean. A well-appointed meteorological station has been established at Port Blair since i868. Speaking generally, the climate of the Andamans themselves may be described as normal for tropical islands of similar latitude. It is warm always, but tempered by pleasant sea-breezes; very hot when the sun is northing; irregular rainfall, but usually dry during the north-east, and very wet during the south-west monsoon.

Flora and Fauna.

A section of the Forest Department of India has been established in the Andamans since 1883, and in the neighbourhood of Port Blair 156 sq.m. have been set apart for regular forest operations which are carried on by convict labour. The chief timber of indigenous growth is padouk (Pterocarpus dalbergioides), used for buildings, boats, furniture, fine joinery and all purposes to which teak, mahogany, hickory, oak and ash are applied. This tree is widely spread and forms a valuable export to European markets. Other first-class timbers are koko (Albiz zia Lebbek), white chuglam (Terminalia bialata), black chuglam (Myristica irya), marble or zebra wood (Diospyros kurzii) and satin wood (Murraya exotica), which differs from the satin-wood of Ceylon (Chloroxylon Swietenia) . All of these timbers are used for furniture and similar purposes. Among the imported flora are tea, Siberian coffee, cocoa, Ceara rubber (which has not done well), Manila hemp, teak, cocoanut and a number of ornamental trees, fruit-trees, vegetables and garden plants. The general character of the forests is Burmese with an admixture of Malay types. Great mangrove swamps supply unlimited firewood of the best quality.

Animal life is generally deficient throughout the Andamans, especially as regards mammalia, of which there are only nineteen separate species in all, twelve of these being peculiar to the islands. There is a small pig (Sus andamanensis), important to the food of the people, and a carnivore (Paradoxurus tytleri) ; but the bats and rats constitute nearly three-fourths of the known mammals. This paucity of animal life seems inconsistent with the theory that the islands were once connected with the mainland. Moreover, the Andaman species differ from those of the adjacent Nicobar islands. Each group has its distinct harrier-eagle, red-cheeked paroquet, oriole, sun-bird and bulbul. Fish are very numerous and many species are peculiar to the Andaman seas. Turtles are abundant and supply the Calcutta market.

The People.

The Andaman islands are the abode of savages as low in civilization as almost any known on earth. Our earliest notice of them is in a remarkable collection of early Arab notes on India and China (A.D. 851), which describes the islanders as cannibals who massacre ship-wrecked crews. The traditional charge of cannibalism has been very persistent ; but it is entirely denied by the islanders themselves, and is now and probably always has been untrue. Of their massacres of shipwrecked crews, even in quite modern times, there is no doubt. The Andamanese are probably the relics of a pigmy race that once inhabited the south-east portion of Asia and its outlying islands, representatives of which are also still to be found in the Malay Peninsula and the Philippines. Their antiquity and their stagnation are attested by the remains found in their kitchen-middens, which lead to the belief that the Andamans were settled by their present inhabi tants some time during the Pleistocene period, and certainly no later than the Neolithic age. Though all descended from one stock, there are twelve distinct tribes, each with its own clearly defined locality, its own distinct variety of the one fundamental language and to a certain extent its own separate habits. Every tribe is divided into septs fairly well defined. The average height of males is 4ft. i o tin. ; of females, 4ft. 6in. The skin varies in colour from an intense sheeny black to a reddish-brown on the collarbones, cheeks and other parts of the body. The hair varies from a sooty black to dark and light brown and red. It grows in small rings, which give it the appearance of growing in tufts, though it is really closely and evenly distributed over the whole scalp. The figures of the men are muscular and well-formed and generally pleasing; but the women have a tendency to stoutness and ungainliness of figure, and sometimes to pronounced prog nathism. The women's heads are shaved entirely and the men's into fantastic patterns. Yellow and red ochre mixed with grease are coarsely smeared over the bodies, grey in coarse patterns and white in fine patterns resembling tattoo marks. Tattooing is of two distinct varieties. In the south the body is slightly cut by women with small flakes of glass or quartz in zigzag or lineal patterns downwards. In the north it is deeply cut by men with pig-arrows in lines across the body. The male matures when about fifteen years of age, marries when about twenty-six, begins to age when about forty, and lives on to sixty or sixty-five if he reaches old age. Except as to the marrying age, these figures fairly apply to women.

The Andamanese are bright and merry companions, keen sports men, but when angered, cruel, jealous, treacherous and vin dictive and always unstable—in fact, a people to like but not to trust. There is no idea of government, but in each Sept there is a head, who has attained that position by degrees on account of some tacitly admitted superiority and commands a limited respect and some obedience. The young are deferential to their elders. Offences are punished by the aggrieved party. Property is com munal and theft is recognized only as to things of absolute neces sity, such as arrows, pigs' flesh and fire. Fire is the one thing they are really careful about, not knowing how to renew it. The religion consists of fear of the spirits of the wood, the sea, disease and ancestors, and of avoidance of acts traditionally displeasing to them. There is neither worship nor propitiation. Honour is shown to an adult when he dies by wrapping him in a cloth and placing him on a platform in a tree instead of burying him. At such a time the encampment is deserted for three months. The only known weapons are bows, which differ altogether with each group, but the same two kinds of arrows are in general use : (r) long and ordinary for fishing and other purposes; (2) short with a detach able head fastened to the shaft by a thong, which quickly brings pigs up short when shot in the thick jungle. Bark provides material for string, while baskets and mats are neatly and stoutly made from canes and buckets out of bamboo and wood. None of the tribes ever ventures out of sight of land, and they have no idea of steering by sun or stars. The Andaman languages are ex tremely interesting from the philological standpoint. They are agglutinative in nature, show hardly any signs of syntactical growth though every indication of long etymological growth, give expression to only the most direct and the simplest thought, and are purely colloquial and wanting in the modifications always nec essary for communications by writing. The sense is largely eked out by manner and action.

For many years the Andamans have been the scene of a highly organized penal settlement to which life convicts and long-term convicts from India were sent; this was the "transportation" of the Indian penal code. The capital of the settlement is Port Blair, where a chief commissioner resides, in charge of the islands and also of the Nicobar group. He has a staff of assistants and overseers, mostly Europeans, and security is ensured by a small garrison of British and Indian troops and a battalion of Indian military police. The purpose of the settlement is largely re formative. After a period of graduated labour, the well-behaved convict is given a ticket-of-leave and becomes self-supporting. He can live in one of the villages comprised in the settlement, farm, keep cattle, marry if he is single, or send to India for his fam ily; but he must not leave the settlement or be idle. His children receive elementary education; and there is ample hospital ac commodation throughout the settlement. With approved conduct he may be released and sent home after 20 to 25 years of total "transportation"; and throughout that time a quasi-judicial pro cedure controls any punishments inflicted on him, and he is as sure of justice as if he were free. The total convict population of all grades used to be in the neighbourhood of 12,000. Since 1921, however, transportation has ceased ; and the gradual abandonment of the settlement has been decided upon. In 1926 the convict population had fallen to just under 8,000. The many self-sup porting convicts cannot well be transferred to imprisonment in India; and there is also a large free-born population who have made the islands their home ; so that the policy is to extend the occupation of the islands for agricultural purposes on a voluntary basis. Good-conduct prisoners in the Indian jails will be allowed to transfer to the Andamans and take their families with them. A number of returned emigrants from Natal have elected to settle in the islands ; and a batch of Karens have come over for forest work. The ticket-of-leave system has been extended, and grants of land with occupancy rights are being given. The area under cultivation has more than doubled since 1921, and exceeded 72, 000ac. in 1926. There are 18 schools in the settlement, and the attendance in 1926 included 228 children of convict parents.