FOOD. STATURE. 537 



" Voyage round the World,"* describes them as follows : " They 

 were covered with seal-skins, which stunk abominably, and 

 some of them were eating the rotten flesh and blubber raw, 

 with a keen appetite and great seeming satisfaction." And 

 again he says : " Some of our people, who were fishing with 

 a hook and line, gave one of them a fish, somewhat bigger 

 than a herring, alive, just as it came out of the water. The 

 Indian took it hastily, as a dog would take a bone, and in- 

 stantly killed it, by giving it a bite near the gills : he then 

 proceeded to eat it, beginning with the head, and going on to 

 the tail, without rejecting either the bones, fins, scales, or 

 entrails." f Their cookery is, if possible, still more disgusting. 

 Fitzroy tells us that it was "too offensive" for description; 

 and the account given by Byron J entirely confirms this state- 

 ment. 



The men, says Fitzroy, "are low in stature, ill-looking, 

 and badly proportioned. Their colour is that of very old 

 mahogany or rather between dark copper and bronze. The 

 trunk of the body is large, in proportion to their cramped 

 or rather crooked limbs. Their rough, coarse, and extremely 

 dirty black hair half hides, yet heightens, a villanous expres- 

 sion of the worst description of savage features. The hair of 

 the women is longer, less coarse, and certainly cleaner than 

 that of the men. It is combed with the jaw of a porpoise, 

 but neither plaited nor tied ; and none is cut away, excepting 

 from over their eyes. They are short, with bodies largely out 

 of proportion to their height ; their features, especially those 

 of the old, are scarcely less disagreeable than the repulsive 

 ones of the men. About four feet and some inches is the 

 stature of these she-Fuegians by courtesy called women. 



* Hawkesworth's Voyages, I.e. J Byron's Loss of the "Wager," 

 p. 403. p. 132. 



t 1. c. p. 403. Voyages of the " Adventure" 



and " Beagle," vol. ii. p. 137. 



