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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 





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Fuegian Canoes. Straits of Magellan. 



the half-grown young she could carry, staying her appetite meanwhile 

 with such raw eggs as could be found. Another woman was busy at the 

 characteristic occupation of baling, for all Fuegian canoes leak, not 

 being dugouts, but made of the roughest of native-hewn slabs lashed 

 together with tough vines or rootlets and caulked with mosses. A third 

 woman and a child seemed to be warming food over a fire and inci- 

 dentally warming their own nearly naked bodies. The party had no 

 knives and borrowed one of ours to cut up their meat. 



Their backs were partly protected by guanaco skins, tied around 

 their necks with the hair side out. These primitive capes were not 

 otherwise fastened and, when the hands were in use, left the body quite 

 exposed to the wind. None of the canoe Indians that we saw had more 

 clothing, except in a few cases where they used portions of cast-off sailor 

 clothes, and none fastened their fur capes about the body with so much 

 as a string. 



There is always a low fire burning on a bed of earth in the bottom 

 of the Fuegian canoe wherever it may be met with, making possible the 

 serving en route of smoked cormorant and baked mussels, but the indi- 

 cations did not always point to that use of the fire, some of the food at 

 least being eaten raw. It is doubtless necessary for these wandering 

 shellfish gatherers to maintain a permanent camp fire ; to light it anew 

 on their rain-saturated shores must tax their ingenuity to the utmost. 

 A careful search of the canoes revealed neither flint nor matches, and 

 the Fuegian has no pockets. This was our first meeting with the canoe 

 Indians. Later we encountered them among the western channels, but 

 never more than two canoes could carry. They were always eager to 

 come aboard the ship and to trade their bone-pointed spears, bows and 



