by the women near the British Settlement.

The Dog-head feature is at least as old as Ctesias. The story originated,
I imagine, in the disgust with which "allophylian" types of countenance
are regarded, kindred to the feeling which makes the Hindus and other
eastern nations represent the aborigines whom they superseded as demons.
The Cubans described the Caribs to Columbus as man-eaters with dogs'
muzzles; and the old Danes had tales of Cynocephali in Finland. A curious
passage from the Arab geographer Ibn Said pays an ambiguous compliment to
the forefathers of Moltke and Von Roon: "The _Borus_ (Prussians) are a
miserable people, and still more savage than the Russians..... One reads
in some books _that the _Borus _have dogs' faces; it is a way of saying
that they are very brave"_ Ibn Batuta describes an Indo-Chinese tribe on
the coast of Arakan or Pegu as having dogs' mouths, but says the _women_
were beautiful. Friar Jordanus had heard the same of the dog-headed
islanders. And one odd form of the story, found, strange to say, both in
China and diffused over Ethiopia, represents the males as _actual_ dogs
whilst the females are women. Oddly, too, Pere Barbe tells us that a
tradition of the Nicobar people themselves represent them as of canine
descent, but on the female side! The like tale in early Portuguese days
was told of the Peguans, viz. that they sprang from a dog and a Chinese
woman. It is mentioned by Camoens (X. 122). Note, however, that in Colonel
Man's notice of the wilder part of the Nicobar people the projecting
canine teeth are spoken of.

Abraham Roger tells us that the Coromandel Brahmans used to say that the
_Rakshasas_ or Demons had their abode "on the Island of Andaman lying on
the route from Pulicat to Pegu," and also that they were man-eaters. This
would be very curious if it were a genuine old Brahmanical _Saga;_ but I
fear it may have been gathered from the Arab seamen. Still it is
remarkable that a strange weird-looking island, a steep and regular
volcanic cone, which rises covered with forest to a height of 2150 feet,
straight out of the deep sea to the eastward of the Andaman group, bears
the name _Narkandam_, in which one cannot but recognise [Script], _Narak_,
"Hell"; perhaps _Naraka-kundam_, "a pit of hell." Can it be that in old
times, but still contemporary with Hindu navigation, this volcano was
active, and that some Brahman St. Brandon recognised in it the mouth of
Hell, congenial to th