Chapter SERAPHIN to SEYCHELLE ISLANDS of S by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

seen in little companies of about that number. Its characteristics are well given in the quotations. See also Jerdon’s Birds (Godwin-Austen’s ed., ii. 59). In China certain birds of starling kind are called by the Chinese pa-ko, or “Eight Brothers,” for a like reason. See Collingwood’s Rambles of a Naturalist, 1868, p. 319. (See MYNA.)

1878.—“The Seven Sisters pretend to feed on insects, but that is only when they cannot get peas … sad-coloured birds hopping about in the dust, and incessantly talking whilst they hop.”—Ph. Robinson, In My Indian Garden, 30–31.

1883.—“… the Satbhai or ‘Seven Brothers’ … are too shrewd and knowing to be made fun of. … Among themselves they will quarrel by the hour, and bandy foul language like fishwives; but let a stranger treat one of their number with disrespect, and the other six are in arms at once. … Each Presidency of India has its own branch of this strange family. Here (at Bombay) they are brothers, and in Bengal they are sisters; but everywhere, like Wordsworth’s opinionative child, they are seven.”—Tribes on My Frontier, 143.

SEVERNDROOG, n.p. A somewhat absurd corruption, which has been applied to two forts of some fame, viz.:

a. Suvarna-druga, or Suwandrug, on the west coast, about 78 m. below Bom bay (Lat. 17° 48’ N.). It was taken in 1755 by a small naval force from Tulaji Angria, of the famous piratical family. [For the commander of the expedition, Commodore James, and his monument on Shooter’s Hill, see Douglas, Bombay and W. India, i. 117 seq.]

b. Savandrug; a remarkable double hill-fort in Mysore, standing on a two-topped bare rock of granite, which was taken by Lord Cornwallis’s army in 1791 (Lat. 12° 55’). [Wilks (Hist. Sketches, Madras reprint, i. 228, ii. 232) calls it Savendy Droog, and Savendroog.]

SEYCHELLE ISLANDS, n.p. A cluster of islands in the Indian Ocean, politically subordinate to the British Government of Mauritius, lying be-between 3° 40’ & 4° 50’ S. Lat., and about 950 sea-miles east of Mombas on the E. African coast. There are 29 or 30 of the Seychelles proper, of which Mahé, the largest, is about 17 m. long by 3 or 4 wide. The principal islands are granitic, and rise “in the centre of a vast plateau of coral” of some 120 m. diameter.

These islands are said to have been visited by Soares in 1506, and were known vaguely to the Portuguese navigators of the 16th century as the Seven Brothers (Os sete Irmanos or Hermanos), sometimes Seven Sisters (Sete Irmanas), whilst in Delisle’s Map of Asia (1700) we have both “les Sept Frères” and “les Sept Sœurs.” Adjoining these on the W. or S.W. we find also on the old maps a group called the Almirantes, and this group has retained that name to the present day, constituting now an appendage of the Seychelles.

The islands remained uninhabited, and apparently unvisited, till near the middle of the 18th century. In 1742 the celebrated Mahé de la Bourdonnais, who was then Governor of Mauritius and the Isle of Bourbon, despatched two small vessels to explore the islands of this little archipelago, an expedition which was renewed by Lazare Picault, the commander of one of the two vessels, in 1774, who gave to the principal island the name of Mahé, and to the group the name of Iles de Bourdonnais, for which Iles Mahé (which is the name given in the Neptune Orientale of D’Apres de Manneville, 1775, pp. 29–38, and the charts), seems to have been substituted. Whatever may have been La Bourdonnais’ plans with respect to these islands, they were interrupted by his engagement in the Indian campaigns of 1745–46, and his government of Mauritius was never resumed. In 1756 the Sieur Morphey (Murphy?), commander of the frigate Le Cerf, was sent by M. Magon, Governor of Mauritius and Bourbon, to take possession of the Island of Mahé. But it seems doubtful if any actual settlement of the islands by the French occurred till after 1769. [See the account of the islands in Owen’s Narrative, ii. 158 seqq.]

A question naturally has suggested itself to us as to how the group came by the name of the Seychelles Islands; and it is one to which no trustworthy answer will be easily found in English, if at all. Even French works of pretension (e.g. the Dictionnaire de la Rousse) are found to state that the islands were named after the “Minister of Marine, Herault de Séchelles, who was eminent for his services and his able administration. He was the first to establish a French settlement there.” This is quoted from La Rousse; but the fact is that the only man of the name known to fame is the Jacobin and friend of Danton, along with whom he perished by the guillotine. There never was a Minister of Marine so called! The name Séchelles first (so far as we can learn) appears in the Hydrographie Française of Belin, 1767, where in a map entitled Carte réduite du Canal de Mozambique the islands are given as Les Iles Sécheyles, with two enlarged plans en cartouche of the Port de Sécheyles. In 1767 also Chev. de Grenier, commanding the Heure du Berger, visited the Islands, and in his narrative states that he