SCIENCE AND TRAVEL 207 



ference between savage and civilized man." It was 

 at Tierra del Fuego that he was particularly shocked. 

 He admired the Tahitians ; he pitied the natives of 

 Tasmania, corralled like wild animals and forced to 

 migrate ; he thought the black aborigines of Aus- 

 tralia had been underestimated and remarked with 

 regret that their numbers were decreasing through 

 their association with civilized man, the introduc- 

 tion of spirits, the increased difficulty of procuring 

 food, and contact with European diseases. In this 

 last cause tending to bring about extinction there 

 was a mysterious element. In Chile his scientific 

 acumen had been baffled in the attempt to explain the 

 invasion of the strange and dreadful disease hydro- 

 phobia. In Australia the problem of the transmission 

 to the natives of various diseases, even by Europeans 

 in apparent health, confronted his intelligence. " The 

 varieties of man seem to act on each other in the same 

 way as different specimens of animals the stronger 

 always extirpating the weaker." 



It was at Wollaston Island, near Cape Horn, how- 

 ever, that Darwin saw savage men held in extremity 

 by the hard conditions of life, and at bay. They had 

 neither food, nor shelter, nor clothing. They stood 

 absolutely naked as the sleet fell on them and melted. 

 At night, " naked and scarcely protected from the 

 wind and rain of this tempestuous climate," they slept 

 on the wet ground coiled up like animals. They sub- 

 sisted on shell fish, putrid whale's blubber, or a few 

 tasteless berries and fungi. At war, the different 

 tribes are cannibals. Darwin writes, " It is certainly 

 true, that when pressed in winter by hunger, they kill 

 and devour their old women before they kill their 



