An'damans

An'damans, a group of thickly wooded islands towards the east side of the Bay of Bengal, about 680 miles S. of the Hooghly mouth of the Ganges, between 10° and 14° of N. lat., and 92° and 94° of E. long. They consist of the Great and Little Andaman groups, surrounded by many smaller islands. The Great Andaman group is more than 150 miles long and 20 miles broad, and comprises four islands, the North, Middle, and South Andaman, and Rutland Island. The Little Andaman, which lies about 30 miles S. of the larger group, is 28 miles long by 17 miles broad. The total area is 2508 sq. m. The native inhabitants stand in the lowest stage of civilisation, and belong to the same family as the original small-statured races in Southern India; their number in Great Andaman is about 2000; in Little Andaman, from 1000 to 1500. Those that have come into contact with the convicts here have deteriorated morally. Their height seldom reaches five feet; their complexion is very dark, the hair crisp and woolly. The men go naked; the women wear round the loins a girdle of leaves. They have no settled dwellings, but go freely from island to island, and subsist on the fruits and beasts of the wood, and upon fish. A British settlement was made on North Andaman in 1789, but abandoned in 1796 for Penang. The capital of the present settlement is at Port Blair, on South Andaman, the largest island of the group. The harbour here is one of the finest in the world. Since 1858, the Andamans have been a penal settlement for sepoys, mutineers, and other life-convicts. In 1881 the population of the convict colony was 14,628, of whom 1988 were women. In 1872 Lord Mayo, viceroy of India, was assassinated at Hope-town on Viper Island by a Mussulman convict.