Andaman Islands, a long, narrow group of small islands in the E. part of the bay of Bengal, in lon. 92° 50' E., and between lat. 10° and 14° N., about 150 m. S. by W. of Cape Ne-grais, 100 m. N. of the Nicobar group, and 350 m. W. of the Tenasserim coast; area, about 3,000 sq.m.; pop. in 1870, 9,630. They include the North, Middle, South, and Little Andaman islands, with a number of islets, and are all densely wooded, producing ship timber and ornamental woods. The 1,000 natives are a diminutive and barbarous people, who seem to be distinct from all other known races, and whose language has no apparent affinity with any other tongue spoken in India or the Indian islands. They are seldom more than five feet in height, have protuberant bellies, slender limbs, woolly hair, thick lips, fiat noses, and small red eyes. Their color is a deep black. They wear no clothing except a thick plaster of mud, intended to resist the attacks of insects. They live in the most wretched huts, subsist by fishing, never till the ground, have no implements that will resist fire, paint their heads with red ochre, will hold no intercourse with strangers, and are supposed to worship the sun and moon.

The British formed a settlement at Port Cornwallis on the largest of the islands in 1793, with the purpose of making a penal colony for convicts from Bengal, but abandoned it three years later on account of the unhealthiness of the climate. After that the group was seldom visited till 1858, when Port Blair on one of the islands was selected as a penal settlement. Here, on Feb. 8, 1872, the earl of Mayo, viceroy of India, was assassinated by a Mohammedan convict, immediately after landing at night for a visit of inspection.