168 TIERRA DEL FUEGO. [CHAP. H. 



their large guanaco mantles, their long flowing hair, and general figure ; 

 on an average their height is about six feet, with some men taller and 

 only a few shorter ; and the women are also tall ; altogether they are 

 certainly the tallest race which we anywhere saw. In features they 

 strikingly resemble the more northern Indians whom I saw with Rosas, 

 but they have a wilder and more formidable appearance ; their faces 

 were much painted with red and black, and one man was ringed and 

 dotted with white like a Fuegian. Captain Fitz Roy offered to take any 

 three of them on board, and all seemed determined to be of the three. 

 It was long before we could clear the boat; at last we got on board with 

 our three giants, who dined with the Captain, and behaved quite like 

 gentlemen, helping themselves with knives, forks, and spoons ; nothing 

 was so much relished as sugar. This tribe has had so much communi- 

 cation with sealers and whalers, that most of the men can speak a little 

 English and Spanish; and they are half civilized, and proportionally 

 demoralized. 



The next morning a large party went on shore to barter for skins 

 and ostrich-feathers; firearms being refused, tobacco was in greatest 

 request, far more so than axes or tools. The whole population of the 

 toldos, men, women, and children, were arranged on a bank. It was an 

 amusing scene, and it was impossible not to like the so-called giants, 

 they were so thoroughly good-humoured and unsuspecting ; they asked 

 us to come again. They seem to like to have Europeans to live with 

 them ; and old Maria, an important woman in the tribe, once begged 

 Mr. Low to leave any one of his sailors with them. They spend the 

 greater part of the year here ; but in summer they hunt along the foot of 

 the Cordillera ; sometimes they travel as far as the Rio Negro, seven 

 hundred and fifty miles to the north. They are well stocked with 

 horses, each man having, according to Mr. Low, six or seven, and all 

 the women, and even children, their one own horse. In the time of 

 Sarmiento (i58o),these Indians had bows and arrows, now long since dis- 

 used ; they then also possessed some horses. This is a very curious fact, 

 showing the extraordinarily rapid multiplication of horses in South 

 America. The horse was first landed at Buenos Ayres in 1537, and the 

 colony being then for a time deserted, the horse ran wild;* in 1580, 

 only forty-three years afterwards, we hear of them at the Strait of 

 Magellan ! Mr. Low informs me, that a neighbouring tribe of foot- 

 Indians is now changing into horse-Indians ; the tribe at Gregory Bay 

 giving them their worn-out horses, and sending in winter a few of their 

 best skilled men to hunt for them. 



June ist. We anchored in the fine bay of Port Famine. It was now 

 the beginning of winter, and I never saw a more cheerless prospect ; 

 the dusky woods, piebald with snow, could be only seen indistinctly 

 through a drizzling hazy atmosphere. We were, however, lucky in 

 getting two fine days. On one of these, Mount Sarmiento, a distant 

 mountain 6,800 feet high, presented a very noble spectacle. I was 

 tiequently surprised, in the scenery of Tierra del Fuego, at the little 

 apparent elevation of mountains really lofty. I suspect it is owing to 

 * Rengger, "Natur. der. Saeugethiere von Paraguay." S. 534. 



