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How did the plant get there? Was it once cultivated there by a race superior to the now utterly savage islanders, and at an epoch so remote that it had not yet lost the power of seeding? Are the Andamans its original home? or rather, was its original home that great southern continent of which the Andamans are perhaps a remnant?

"To-day," he continued, after a pause, "Peters' are going to sell a batch of plants from the Andamans and the Indies. I shall go up and see what they have. It may be I shall buy something good unawares. That may be it." He passed his cup for his second cupful of coffee.

The voyage to the Andamans is characterized by fine weather enough; but from that onward we steam through a succession of heavy rain-storms; and down in the Strait of Malacca it can pour quite as heavily as on the Gangetic plains. At Penang it keeps up such an incessant downpour that the beauties of that lovely port are viewed only from beneath the ship's awning.

I was changed from Agra to Madras, and from there to Blair Island in the Andamans. There are very few white convicts at this settlement, and, as I had behaved well from the first, I soon found myself a sort of privileged person. I was given a hut in Hope Town, which is a small place on the slopes of Mount Harriet, and I was left pretty much to myself.

But it does seem a queer thing," he added, with a bitter smile, "that I who have a fair claim to nigh upon half a million of money should spend the first half of my life building a breakwater in the Andamans, and am like to spend the other half digging drains at Dartmoor.

Jenks thought, from the manner in which his turban was tied, that he must be a Punjabi Mussulman very likely an escaped convict from the Andamans. The most careful scrutiny did not reveal any arms of precision. They all carried muzzle-loaders, either antiquated flintlocks, or guns sufficiently modern to be fitted with nipples for percussion caps.

The condition, however, is much more complicated as we can now distinguish at least two main races among the aborigines. We have no evidence as to who were the primitive inhabitants of Borneo. One would expect to find Negritos in the interior, as these black, woolly-haired pygmies inhabit the Andamans, parts of the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, the Philippines, New Guinea, and possibly Melanesia.

There were two or three chaps what I've heard talkin' terrible bitter agin him; and one fine young man, Ar Bo, who is back from the Andamans where he got sent to for three year, on account of this cocaine business told me that he met a lot of clever fellows from all parts of the world; up to every dodge they were, and one of them instructed him in the way of killing a man stone dead and not leaving a spot on him!

"Of course, there is no means of determining how far till we can get a glimpse of the sun; but there is no doubt that, if the gale continues, we shall soon be in a very perilous position, for we must be driving towards the Andamans. We may have the luck to pass north of them, or to go between them.

Passing the north-west end of Sumatra, the pirates steered for the Nicobar Islands, to the south of the Andamans. Here the ship was again careened, in order that she might be thoroughly cleaned, and thus sail faster. The natives were a well-looking people, of a dark colour, the men being almost naked, but the women wore a short petticoat.