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Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 5, p. 353.

ADMIN-IS TRA, TION 353 and the large number of more or less inaccurate notes extant about them were made by observers of widely different equipment for the purpose, and are scattered over publications difficult of access, so that many controversial points remain unsettled. However, despite local differences, they can be fairly treated as one people, whose affinities are towards the Far Eastern and not towards the Indian races. Their own idea of themselves is that they came from the Tenasserim coast, an idea borne out by physical structure, social habits, trend of civilization, and language. Everything so far ascertained points to an origin from the Indo-Chinese, as distinguished from the Tibeto-Burmese or Malay tribes or nations. In the view that they represent that portion of the Indo-Chinese race which has been the longest isolated and the most free from disturbing influences, they are of the highest ethnological interest. It is not the policy of Government to raise revenue from the aboriginal population of the islands; and financial interests are confined to the Penal Settlement, in which the requirements of convict Administration. discipline and management are placed before revenue. The expenditure for 1904-5 was 18-3 lakhs; and the revenue, chiefly the result of convict labour on productive works, was 9.8 lakhs. Of this sum about two-thirds was raised from convict labour devoted to forest produce. The islands are administered by the Chief Commissioner of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, who is also Superintendent of the Penal Settlement. All the officials reside in the Penal Settlement, except the Government Agents at Mus in Car Nicobar and at Nancowry Harbour (Camorta). Such slight control as is necessary over the Andamanese is exercised by an officer in charge of them, who is one of the executive magisterial officers of the Penal Settlement, appointed for the purpose by the Chief Commissioner. The control of the Nicobars is exercised by judicial and executive officers deputed to visit the islands at short periods by the Chief Commissioner and under his orders. The whole of the Andamans and the outlying islands were completely surveyed topographically by the Indian Survey department in I883-6; and a number of maps on the scale of 2 miles to the inch were produced, which give an accurate coast-line everywhere, and astonishingly correct contours of the inland hills, considering the difficulties presented by the denseness of the forests with which they are covered. For Port Blair and the neighbourhood a series of maps on the scale of 4 inches to the mile were made. The exact latitude and longitude of Chatham Island in Port Blair Harbour were determined astronomically in i86r as I1° 4I' 13"' N. and 92° 42' 44" E. The marine surveys of the Andamans date back many years to the days of Ritchie (1771), and of Blair and Moorsom (1788-96), for partial charts which are still of use. Booker's surveys of 1867 added much to the knowledge of Port Blair; VOL. V. A a