3-028-753 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Nicobar Islands, Indian Ocean: Natives, 1870. Sketch from a photograph by Captain J.M. Williams, Assistant Government engineer of Mysore, who accompanied the naval squadron's expedition. 'The recent occupation of the Nicobar Islands by the agents of the British Government, and their formal annexation to the Indian empire of Queen Victoria, as a remedy for the many outrages perpetrated by their savage inhabitants upon shipwrecked English crews, must be fresh in the public recollection. These islands, called by the Malays Pulo Sambillong, consist of nine islands, in two separate groups, lying not far from the western extremity of Sumatra, off the southern promontory of the Malayan peninsula...The rainy season continues nine months of the year, and hurricanes are frequent...The people, of the Malay race, numbering about 1000 in all the islands together, are savages of a lawless and ferocious disposition. The men go entirely naked, and have no employment but hunting, fishing, and piracy; their addiction to which last-mentioned pursuit has obliged the British Government to take possession of the islands...[which are] distant rather less than 200 miles from the Andamans'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.