Few travellers penetrate to the Andamans, unless it be an enthusiastic astronomer to witness a rare comet, or an enterprising professor, who happens to be fired with a desire to study the language and the skulls of the aborigines.

These islands are as yet sacred from the foot of the globe-trotter, Cook's tourists ignore them, and they lie in serene semi-savage seclusion, in the midst of the Indian Ocean, dimly known to the great outer world as the chief Indian convict settlement, and the scene of Lord Mayo's murder in 1872. The inland portions of the great and lesser Andamans have been but cursorily explored, (those who have made the attempt, having learnt by tragic experience that the inhabitants were addicted to cannibalism); but outlying islets, and fringes of the coast, have been opened up by the Indian Government, and appropriated for the benefit of thousands of convicts (chiefly lifers), who are annually poured into Port Blair—from Galle to the Kyber, from Aden to the borders of China, the cry is still they come!

Port Blair, the Government headquarters, is situated on Ross, a high conical islet that lies about a mile south of the Middle Andaman, and although of limited circumference, it boasts a stone church, barracks, a Commandant's residence, several gaols, a pier, a bazaar, a circulating library, and a brass band! Every foot of ground is laid out to marvellous advantage, and the neat gravelled pathways, thick tropical hedges, flowering shrubs and foliage plants, give the numerous brown bungalows which cover the hillsides, the effect of being situated in a large and well-kept garden.

The summit of the island commands a wide view: to the north lies the mainland with its sharply indented shores, and a wide sickle-shaped estuary, sweeping far away into the interior, where its wooded curves are lost among the hills; the southern side of Ross looks sheer out upon the boundless ocean, and receives the full force of many a terrible tropical hurricane, that has travelled unspent from the Equator.

There was not a ripple on that vast blue surface, one certain August evening, a few years ago—save where it fretted gently in and out, between the jagged black rocks that surrounded the island; the sea was like a mirror, and threw back an accurate reflection of boats, and hills, and wooded shores; distant, seldom-seen islands, now loomed in the horizon with vague, misty outlines; a delicate, soft, south wind barely touched the leaves of the big trees, among whose branches the busy green parrots had been chattering, and the gorgeous peacocks, screeching and swinging, all through the long, hot, sleepy afternoon.

Surely the setting sun was making a more lingering and, as it were, regretful adieu to these beautiful remote islands than to other parts of the world! No pen could describe, no brush convey, any idea of the vivid crimson, western clouds, and the flood of blinding golden light, that bathed the hills, the far-away islets, the tangled mangroves, and the gla