158 Dr Morton on the Distinetive Characteristics of the 
the influence of an inhospitable climate, have reduced to a 
feeble intelligence,—the moral childhood of their race. Not 
even the stimulus of necessity has been able to excite that 
ingenuity which would so amply provide for all their wants ; 
and they starve amid the abundant stores of the ocean, because 
they possess no adequate means for obtaining them. The 
Falkland and Malouine islands, in but fifty degrees of South 
latitude, South Georgia, New South Shetland, and some 
smaller islands in nearly the same parallel, were, at their dis- 
covery, entirely uninhabited; nor is there any evidence of 
their ever having been visited by any American tribe. Yet 
they possess seals and other marine animals in vast numbers, 
and in these and all other respects appear to be not less pro- 
ductive than the region inhabited by the Esquimaux. 
It is generally supposed that nautical enterprize results from 
the necessity of the case, in nations proximate to or sur- 
rounded by the sea. We have seen, however, that the natives 
of the islands of the Gulf of Mexico were exceptions to the 
rule; and we find another not less remarkable in the archi- 
pelago of Chiloe, on the coast of Chili. These islands are 
seen from the shore, and have a large Indian population, 
which depends for subsistence on fish taken from the sur- 
rounding ocean; yet even so late as the close of the past 
century, after more than two hundred years of communica- 
tion with the Spaniards, their boats appear not to have been 
the least improved from their original model. The padre 
Gonzalez de Agueros, who resided many years among these 
islanders, describes their canoes as composed of five or six 
boards, narrowed at the ends, and lashed tegether with cords, 
the seams being filled with moss. They have sails, but neither 
keel nor deck; and in these frail and primitive vessels the 
inhabitants commit themselves to a tempestuous sea in search 
of their daily food. The same miserable vessels are found in 
exclusive use in the yet more southern archipelago of Guai- 
tecas, in which a sparse population is distributed over eight 
hundred islands, and depends solely on the sea for subsistence. 
The mechanical ingenuity of these people, therefore, is not 
greater than that of the, other Indians; but, from constant 
practice with their wretched bos, they have acquired a dex- 
