1834,] INDIAN GRAVE. 169 



In the evening we sailed a few miles further up, and then 

 pitched the tents for the night. By the middle of the next day 

 the yawl was aground, and from the shoalness of the water could 

 not proceed any higher. The water being found partly fresh, 

 Mr. Chaffers took the dingey and went up two or three miles 

 further, where she also grounded, but in a fresh-water river. 

 The water was muddy, and though the stream was most insigni- 

 ficant in size, it would be difficult to account for its origin, 

 except from the melting snow on the Cordillera. At the spot 

 where we bivouacked, we were surrounded by bold cliffs and 

 steep pinnacles of porphyry. I do not think I ever saw a spot 

 which appeared more secluded from the rest of the world, than 

 this rocky crevice in the wide plain. 



The second day after our return to the anchorage, a party of 

 officers and myself went to ransack an old Indian grave, which I 

 had found on the summit of a neighbouring 1 hill. Two immense 

 stones, each probably weighing at least a couple of tons, had 

 been placed in front of a ledge of rock about six feet high. At 

 the bottom of the grave on the hard rock there was a layer 

 of earth about a foot deep, which must have been brought up 

 from the plain below. Above it a pavement of flat stones was 

 placed, on which others were piled, so as to fill up the space 

 between the ledge and the two great blocks. To complete the 

 grave, the Indians had contrived to detach from the ledge a huge 

 fragment, and to throw it over the pile so as to rest on the two 

 blocks. We undermined the grave on both sides, but could not 

 find any relics, or even bones. The latter probably had decayed 

 long since (in which case the grave must have been of extreme 

 antiquity), for I found in another place some smaller heaps, 

 beneath which a very few crumbling fragments could yet be 

 distinguished as having belonged to a man. Falconer states, 

 that where an Indian dies he is buried, but that subsequently his 

 bones are carefully taken up and carried, let the distance be ever 

 so great, to be deposited near the sea-coast. This custom, I 

 think, may be accounted for by recollecting, that before the in- 

 troduction of horses, these Indians must have led nearly the 

 same life as the Fuegians now do, and therefore generally have 

 resided in the neighbourhood of the sea. The common prejudice 

 of lying where one's ancestors have lain, would make the now 



