Being delivered out of this pound, we followed our course till the 9th May about four in the afternoon, when we got sight of the islands of Nicobar, on which we bore in and anchored on the north side of the channel.  But as the wind changed to S.W. we had to weigh again, and go over to the south side of the channel, where we came to an anchor under a small island on that shore.  We here got fresh water and cocoa-nuts, but very little other refreshments; yet the natives came off to us in long canoes that could have carried twenty men in each.  They brought gums to sell instead of amber, with which they deceived several of our men; for these eastern people are wholly given to deceit.  They brought also hens and cocoa-nuts for sale; but held them at so dear a rate that we bought very few.  We staid here ten days, putting our ordnance in order and trimming our ships, that we might be in readiness at our first port, which we were not now far from.

In the morning of the 20th April, we set sail for Sumatra, but the wind blew hard at S.S.W. and the current set against us, so that we could not proceed.  While beating up and down, two of our ships sprung leaks, on which we were forced to go to the island of Sombrero,[108] ten or twelve leagues north of Nicobar.  Here we in the Admiral lost an anchor, for the ground is foul, and grown full of false coral and some rocks, which cut our cable asunder, so that we could not recover our anchor.  The people of these islands go entirely naked, except that their parts are bound up in a piece of cloth, which goes round the waist like a girdle, and thence between their legs.  They are all of a tawny hue, and paint their faces of divers colours.  They are stout and well-made, but very fearful, so that none of them would come on board our ships, or even enter our boats.  The general reported that he had seen some of their priests all over cloathed, but quite close to their bodies, as if sewed on; having their faces painted green, black, and yellow, and horns on their heads turned backwards, painted of the same colours, together with a tail hanging down behind from their buttocks, altogether as we see the devil sometimes painted in Europe.  Demanding why they went in that strange attire, he was told that the devil sometimes appeared to them in such form in their sacrifices, and therefore his servants the priests were so cloathed.  There grew many trees in this island, sufficiently tall, thick, and straight to make main-masts for the largest ship in all our fleet, and this island is full of such.

[Footnote 108:  So called, because on the north end of the largest island of the cluster there is a hill resembling the top of an umbrella—­ASTL.  I. 267. a.]