TIERRA DEL FUEGO. It consists merely of a few broken branches stuck in the ground, and very rudely thatched on one side with a few tufts of grass and rushes. The whole cannot be the work of an hour, and it is only used for a few days. On the west coast, however, the wigwams are rather better, for they are covered with seal-skins. While going one day on shore near Wollaston Island, we pulled alongside a canoe with six Fuegians. These were the most abject and miserable creatures I anywhere beheld. On the east coast the natives, as we have seen, have guanaco cloaks, and on the west they possess seal-skins. Among these central tribes the men generally have an otter-skin, or some small scrap, about as large as a pocket-handkerchief, which is barely sufficient to cover their backs as low down as their loins. It is laced across the breast by strings, and, according as the wind blows, it is shifted from side to side. But these Fuegians in the canoe were quite naked, and even one full-grown woman was absolutely so. It was raining heavily, and the fresh water, together with the spray, trickled down her body. In another harbor, not far distant, a woman who was suckling a newly-born child came one day alongside the vessel, and remained there, out of mere curiosity, while the sleet fell and thawed on her naked bosom and on the skin of her naked baby! These poor wretches were stunted in their growth, their hideous faces bedaubed with white paint, their skins filthy and greasy, their hair entangled, their voices discordant, and their gestures violent. Viewing such men, one can hardly make one's self believe that they are fellow-creatures, and inhabitants of the same world. We 918879 TIERRA DEL FUEGO. often try to imagine what pleasure in life some of the lower animals can enjoy: how much more reasonably the same question may be asked concerning these barbarians! At night five or six human beings, naked, and scarcely protected from the wind and rain of this tempestuous climate, sleep on the wet ground, coiled up like animals. Whenever it is low water-winter or summer, night or day-they must rise to pick shell-fish from the rocks; and the women either dive to collect sea-eggs or sit patiently in their canoes, and with a baited hair-line, without any hook, jerk out little fish. If a seal is killed, or the floating carcass of a putrid whale discovered, it is a feast; and such miserable food is assisted by a few tasteless berries and fungi. TIERRA DEL FUEGO. They often suffer from famine: I heard Mr. Low, a sealing-master very well acquainted with the natives of this country, give a curious account of the state of a party of one hundred and fifty natives on the west coast, who were very thin, and in great distress. A succession of gales prevented the women from getting shell-fish on the rocks, and they could not go out in their canoes to catch seal. A small party of these men one morning set out on a four days' journey for food; on their return Low went to meet them, and found them excessively tired each man carrying a great square piece of putrid whale's-blubber, with a hole in the middle, through which he put his head, as the Gauchos do through their ponchos or cloaks. As soon as the blubber was brought into a wigwam an old man cut off the slices, and, muttering over them, broiled them for a minute, and distributed them to the famished party, who, during this time, preserved a profound silence. Mr. Low believes that whenever a whale is cast on shore the natives bury large pieces of it in the sand as a resource in time of famine. The different tribes, when at war, are cannibals; and it is cer tainly true that, when pressed in winter by hunger, they kill and devour their old women before they kill their dogs. A boy, being asked by Mr. Low why they did this, answered: Doggies catch otters, old women no." 66 Few, if any, of the natives in the Beagle Channel could ever have seen a white man; certainly nothing could exceed their astonishment at the sight of our four boats. Fires were lighted on every point (hence the name of Tierra del Fuego, or the land of fire), both to attract our attention and to |