Clothing Hunting Appliances. 51 



from elaborate, they otherwise evinced the usual love of their sex 

 for articles intended to be ornamental. They commonly wore 

 round their throats necklaces composed of margarita shells, 

 porpoise teeth, or fragments of calcareous worm-tubes, strung 

 together. Their faces, as well as those of the men, were some- 

 times daubed with black charcoal, and sometimes with a paste 

 composed of white wood-ashes, but with what precise object we 

 did not ascertain. 



The affection of these savages for their children does not seem 

 to be of a very stable character ; for, by all accounts, they are willing 

 to part with them for a trifling consideration. A Fuegian boy, 

 christened Tom Picton, whom we took on board in the Trinidad 

 Channel, quitted his relations without any manifestation of reluc- 

 tance ; and they, on their part, were readily conciliated by the 

 gift of a few necklaces and some biscuit. In Byron's narrative 

 of the loss of the Wager, there is a most interesting account of 

 his wanderings among the natives of the Gulf of Peiias. He 

 mentions that, on one occasion, a savage was so exasperated with 

 his son, a child of three years, who had accidentally dropped into 

 the water a basket containing some sea-eggs (Echini), that he 

 " caught the boy up in his arms, and dashed him with the utmost 

 violence against the stones," the child dying soon afterwards. 



Their hunting appliances are few and simple ; the canoe is a 

 rude structure, but answers its purpose well enough. It is con- 

 structed of five planks, of which one, about 20 ft. by 2j in width, 

 forms the bottom, and the other four, each i ft. wide, form the 

 sides. The bottom plank is turned up at the ends, so as to form 

 a flat bow and stern of nearly similar shape ; and to this, as well 

 as to each other, the side planks are laced by the long flexible 

 stem of a creeping plant, which is passed through rude squarish 

 holes, about one inch in area, which are made in an even row 

 close to the edges of the planks. The material used for the 

 lacing appeared to be the stem of the Campsidium chilense, a 

 creeper which grows to a great length, is very abundant, and is 



