154 TIERRA DEL FUEGO. [CHAP, x 



ihese naked men had slept, which absolutely offered no more cover 

 than the form of a hare. The man was evidently living by himself, 

 and York Minster said he was "very bad man," and that probably 

 he had stolen something. On the west coast, however, the wigwams 

 are rather better, for they are covered with seal-skins. We were 

 detained here several days by the bad weather. The climate is cer- 

 tainly wretched : the summer solstice was now passed, yet every day 

 snow fell on the hills, and in the valleys there was rain, accompanied 

 by sleet. The thermometer generally stood about 45, but in the night 

 fell to 38" or 40. From the damp and boisterous state of the atmo- 

 sphere, not cheered by a gleam of sunshine, one fancied the climate 

 even worse than it really was. 



While going one day on shore near Wollaston Island, we pulled 

 alongside a canoe with six Fuegians. These were the most abject 

 and miserable creatures I anywhere beheld. On the east coast the 

 natives, as we have seen, have guanaco cloaks, and on the west, they 

 possess seal-skins. Amongst these central tribes the men generally 

 have an otter-skin, or some small scrap about as large as a pocket- 

 handkerchief, which is barely sufficient to cover their backs as low 

 down as their loins. It is laced across the breast by strings, and 

 according as the wind blows, it is shifted from side to side. But these 

 Fuegians in the canoe were quite naked, and even one full-grown 

 woman was absolutely so. It was raining heavily, and the fresh water, 

 together with the spray, trickled down her body. In another harbour 

 not far distant, a woman, who was suckling a rec&ntly-born child, 

 came one day alongside the vessel, and remained there out of mere 

 curiosity, whilst the sleet fell and thawed on her naked bosom, and on 

 the skin of her naked baby 1 These poor wretches were stunted in their 

 growth, their hideous faces bedaubed with white paint, their skins filthy 

 and greasy, their hair entangled, their voices discordant, and their 

 gestures violent. Viewing such men, one can hardly make oneself 

 believe that they are fellow-creatures, and inhabitants of the same world. 

 It is a common subject of conjecture what pleasure in life some of the 

 lower animals can enjoy ; how much more reasonably the same 

 question may be asked with respect to these barbarians ! At night, 

 five or six human beings, naked and scarcely protected from the 

 wind and rain of this tempestuous climate, sleep on the wet ground 

 coiled up like animals. Whenever it is low water, winter or summer, 

 night or day, they must rise to pick shell-fish from the rocks ; and the 

 women either dive to collect sea-eggs, or sit patiently in their canoes, and 

 with a baited hair-line without any hook, jerk out little fish. If a seal is 

 killed, or the floating carcass of a putrid whale discovered, it is a feast ; 

 and such miserable food is assisted by a few tasteless berries and fungi. 



They often suffer from famine: I heard Mr. Low, a sealing-master 

 intimately acquainted with the natives of this country, give a curious 

 account of the state of a party of one hundred and fifty natives on the 

 west coast, who were very thin and in great distress. A succession of 

 gales prevented the women from getting shell-fish on the rocks, and 

 they could not go out in their canoes to catch seal. A small party of 



