3-028-770 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Nicobar Islands, Indian Ocean: Village of Mala, Point Mayo, Nancowry, 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...Their soil is of volcanic formation, and extremely fertile; they are overgrown with cocoa-palms and bamboos, but will yield sugar, tobacco, oranges, and various tropical produce...the native village of Mala, [is] composed of a few slightly-built huts, which are made of boughs, and thatched with grass, stuck upon rows of upright poles on the marshy shore, but sheltered by luxuriant cocoanut palms. The people, of the Malay race...are savages of a lawless and ferocious disposition'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.