194 FALKLAND ISLANDS. [CHAP. ix. 



West Falkland. I have no doubt it is a peculiar species, and 

 confined to this archipelago ; because many sealers, Gauchos, 

 and Indians, who have visited these islands, all maintain that no 

 such animal is found in any part of South America. Molina, 

 from a similarity in habits, thought that this was the same with 

 his " culpeu ;" * but I have seen both, and they are quite distinct. 

 These wolves are well known, from Byron's account of their 

 lameness and curiosity, which the sailors, who ran into the 

 water to avoid them, mistook for fierceness. To this day their 

 manners remain the same. They have been observed to enter a 

 tent, and actually pull some meat from beneath the head of a 

 sleeping seaman. The Gauchos also have frequently in the 

 evening killed them, by holding out a piece of meat in one hand, 

 and in the other a knife ready to stick them. As far as I am 

 aware, there is no other instance in any part of the world, of so 

 small a mass of broken land, distant from a continent, possessing 

 so large an aboriginal quadruped peculiar to itself. Their num- 

 bers have rapidly decreased ; they are already banished from that 

 half of the island which lies to the eastward of the neck of land 

 between St. Salvador Bay and Berkeley Sound. Within a very 

 few years after these islands shall have become regularly settled, 

 in all probability this fox will be classed with the dodo, as an 

 animal which has perished from the face of the earth. 



At night (17th) we slept on the neck of land at the head of 

 Choiseul Sound, which forms the south-west peninsula. The 

 valley was pretty well sheltered from the cold wind ; but there 

 was very little brushwood for fuel. The Gauchos, however, soon 

 found what, to my great surprise, made nearly as hot a fire as 

 coals ; this was the skeleton of a bullock lately killed, from which 

 the flesh had been picked by the carrion-hawks. They told me 

 that in winter they often killed a beast, cleaned the flesh from the 

 bones with theii knives, and then with these same bones roasted 

 the meat for their suppers. 



18th. It rained during nearly the whole day. At night we 

 managed, however, with our saddle-cloths to keep ourselves 

 pretty well dry and warm ; but the ground on which we slept 

 was on each occasion nearly in the state of a bog, and there was 



* The "culpeu" is the Cauls Magellanicus brought home by Captain 

 King from the Strait of Magellan, it is common in Chile. 



