156 TIERRA DEL FUEGO. [CHAP. x. 



over the cliff, and saw " wild man " picking his birds ; he crawled a 

 little nearer, and then hurled down a great stone and killed him. York 

 declared for a long time afterwards storms raged, and much rain and 

 snow fell. As far as we could make out, he seemed to consider the 

 elements themselves as the avenging agents : it is evident in this case, 

 how naturally, in a race a little more advanced in culture, the elements 

 would become personified. What the " bad wild men " were, has 

 always appeared to me most mysterious ; from what York said, when 

 we found the place like the form of a hare, where a single man had 

 slept the night before, I should have thought that they were thieves who 

 had been driven from their tribes ; but other obscure speeches made me 

 doubt this ; I have sometimes imagined that the most probable 

 explanation was that they were insane. 



The different tribes have no government or chiel ; yet each is 

 surrounded by other hostile tribes, speaking different dialects, and 

 separated from each other only by a deserted border or neutral territory: 

 the cause of their warfare appears to be the means of subsistence. 

 Their country is a broken mass of wild rocks, lofty hills, and useless 

 forests ; and these are viewed through mists and endless storms. The 

 habitable land is reduced to the stones on the beach ; in search of food 

 they are compelled unceasingly to wander from spot to spot, and so 

 steep is the coast that they can only move about in their wretched 

 canoes. They cannot know the feeling of having a home, and still less 

 that of domestic affection ; for the husband is to the wife a brutal 

 master to a laborious slave. Was a more horrid deed ever perpetrated, 

 than that witnessed on the west coast by Byron, who saw a wretched 

 mother pick up her bleeding dying infant-boy, whom her husband had 

 mercilessly dashed on the stones for dropping a basket of sea-eggs ? 

 How little can the higher powers of the mind be brought into play : 

 what is there for imagination to picture, for reason to compare, for 

 judgment to decide upon ? To knock a limpet from the rock does not 

 require even cunning, that lowest power of the mind. Their skill in 

 some respects may be compared to the instinct of animals ; for it is not 

 improved by experience : the canoe, their most ingenious work, poor as 

 it is, has remained the same, as we know from Drake, for the last two 

 hundred and fifty years 



Whilst beholding these savages, one asks, whence have they come ? 

 What could have tempted, or what change compelled a tribe of men, to 

 leave the fine regions of the north, to travel down the Cordillera or 

 backbone oi America, to invent and build canoes, which are not used 

 by the tribes of Chile, Peru, and Brazil, and then to enter on one of the 

 most inhospitable countries within the limits of the globe ? Although 

 such reflections must at first seize on the mind, yet we may feel sure 

 that they are partly erroneous. There is no reason to believe that the 

 Fuegians decrease in number; therefore we must suppose that they 

 enjoy a sufficient share of happiness, of whatever kind it may be, to 

 render life worth having. Nature by making habit omnipotent, and its 

 effects hereditary, has fitted the Fuegian to the climate and the produc- 

 tions of his miserable country. 



