56 Charles Darwin. 



in the extreme. Many, crazed with intoxication, 

 threw themselves upon the cattle slaughtered for 

 them, and drank the streaming blood like so many 

 brutes. The following day they started on the trail 

 of the Indians, but the latter had made good their 

 escape on the great pampas. 



Darwin gives these Indians no little credit for 

 skill and intelligence in obtaining results from what 

 would be unintelligible to a white man. Thus they 

 could examine the tracks of a thousand horses and 

 tell how many were mounted by men, how many 

 bore loads, whether they were fresh or fatigued, and 

 whether they were going fast or slowly. For this 

 they did not not need a fresh trail, one ten days old 

 being read with equal ease. The Indians exhibited 

 in their warfare a ferocity that would do credit to 

 some of the red men of America. To show their 

 nature, Darwin found that a man struck down seized 

 his assailant by the thumb with his teeth and clung 

 to it like a bull-dog while his eyes were torn out. 

 Another feigned death, hoping an enemy might 

 approach within reach of his knife, so that he might 

 die red-handed. Another fled crying for mercy, 

 and was seen trying to clear his bolas all the time. 

 Darwin's informant nonchalantly said that he squared 

 accounts with this fellow by striking him down with 

 a sabre, then, dismounting, cut his throat with his 

 knife — a horrible picture, and seemingly impossible 

 in a civilised land. 



That the Indians are disappearing before the 

 Spaniards, as they have in North America, is a well- 

 known fact, and their extermination is only a matter 



