Andamans
a group of thickly Bay of Bengal, about 680 miles S. of the Hooghly mouth of the Ganges, be- 92° and 94° of E. longitude. They contween 10° and 14° of N. latitude, and sist of the Great and Little Andaman groups, surrounded by many smaller islands. The Great Andaman group is more than 200 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 2,508 square miles. The native inhabitants stand in the lowest stage of civilization, and belong to the same family as the original small-statured races in southern India; their number in the entire group is steadily decreasing and now is only about 1,300. The total population of the islands is about 18,000. 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 fruit 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 harbor here is one of the finest in the world.
Since 1858 the Andamans have been a penal settlement for Sepoy mutineers and other life convicts.