In this heavy jungle we obtained specimens of _Astur butleri_, a little forest hawk with back and wings of a beautiful dark grey, allied species to which are found in several of the other islands. Here, too, we met with _Carpophaga insularis_, a variety of a widely-spread fruit-pigeon, _C. ænea_, from which it differs only in having a plumage slightly less bright. We made acquaintance also with _Palæornis erythrogenys_, an exceedingly pretty parrot, and the only bird of its kind occurring in the Nicobars until _P. caniceps_ is reached in the southern islands; but of the mound-building megapodes we had expected to find, there was no trace, although it was said they occurred in the middle of the island.
We obtained in the jungle one specimen of a hitherto unknown fruit-bat (_Pteropus faunulus_); but of rats, although they are probably numerous, one only was trapped (_Mus burrulus_, sp. nov.); crabs in nearly every instance making off with the baits.
As a rendezvous after our collecting excursions, we generally chose "Temple Villa," where we could sit and chat with the agent on the manners and customs of the natives among whom he lived, and drink the water of young coconuts freshly plucked from the trees surrounding the bungalow.
The coconut of the Nicobars, although small, is nowhere excelled for sweetness and flavour, and on reaching the schooner, drenched with perspiration after a morning's wandering in the forest, and perhaps a long row under the hot midday sun, we daily made appreciative trial of them the moment we stepped on board.
The natives are very expert in opening them with the _dáo_. Holding the nut in the palm of the left hand, they slash off a portion of the husk, toss it round and remove another slice, until, with three or four cuts, the tender shell at the upper end is exposed, and only requires a slight tap to be broken through and allow the delicious water inside to reveal itself with a spurt.
The life of the Nicobarese is full of curious observances and ceremonies, of which, perhaps, no man knows more than Mr Solomon, who has spent five years among the people, and is engaged in the preparation of a vocabulary of their language.
In his capacity as catechist, he has not succeeded in converting any of his adult neighbours to Christianity, although one or two are occasionally present at his Sunday services. We met with one proselyte to Mohammedanism among them, but he, having been adopted by a trader when a boy, was taken to the Maldives and spent some years there. The natives as a body are still as averse to foreign influence on this point as they have been in the past, when missionary endeavour--Moravian and Jesuit--time after time met with complete failure. In the second quarter of the last century they expelled two priests of the latter sect from the island, and Captain Gardner, in 1851, gives an account of the same fate befalling a pair of Moravians.[28] "Having converted a few natives, disputes arose between these and their heathen countrymen. They were of such a serious nature that it was determined to hold a general council of delegates from every village to consider a remedy for the evil. They came to the conclusion, that, as they had always lived in love and amity with each other before the arrival of the missionaries, with their strange story of the first woman stealing the orange, etc., the obvious remedy was to send them away. Accordingly, the missionaries were waited on, and told respectfully that they must leave at the first opportunity: that the natives were not to be joked with, and must be obeyed. The mission house was then burnt down, and a fence erected round the spot, inside which no native will step. It is unholy ground, they say, where the devil first landed; for, until the missionaries brought him with them, he had never been in the island, or knew where it was. I was told that a day is now set apart in the year when all the inhabitants assemble to drive the devil out of the island."