V A T A G N I A. 



'I'm: following vocabularies were obtained at the town of Carmen, a small frontier 

 in. MI of Iliieiios Ay res, situated about fifteen miles from the mouth of the Rio Negro, 

 which divides the territory of that Republic from the independent or rather the desert 

 region of Patagonia. The Indians who are accustomed to visit this settlement for the 

 purposes of trade are known to the inhabitants by the designations of Aucases, Pampas 

 Indians, T'liiiilirhrs (or 'tikio'li-lti's), and Chilenos. The first two are said to occupy 

 the extensive plains which stretch from the Rio Negro northward as far as the Rio Colo- 

 rado. The Tohuiliches and Chilenos dwell south of the Rio Negro, the former holding 

 the country east of the Andes, and the latter belonging properly to the west of that chain, 

 though they frequently make incursions into the territory of their neighbours. 



The natives whom we saw presented the usual characteristics of the American abo- 

 rigines, a medium stature, with well-formed limbs, a brownish copper complexion, 

 coarse, straight black hair, growing low on the forehead, small, black, and deep-set eyes, 

 and a wide laee, with the zygomatic arches prominent. One of them had a physiognomy 

 of the true Mongolian type, with the opening of the eyes narrow and oblique. In their 

 character and mode of lite they resemble the Indians on our western prairies, spending 

 iiuicli of their time on horseback, engaged in hunting or warlike expeditions. They are 

 the same haughty, fierce, stubborn, taciturn, unintellectual race as, with some partial 

 and local exceptions, all the tribes of this continent have been found to be. Their num- 

 bers are necessarily small, as their means of subsistence are limited to the chase and 

 to fishery, in a region not very favorable to either ; but on this point no exact information 

 was obtained. 



LANGUAGES. 



Of the tribe called Aucases, nothing was learned further than that they lived north of 

 the others, were of inferior stature, and spoke a peculiar idiom. 



The Chilenos, or Chilian Indians, are, without doubt, the same people as the well- 

 known Arai/canos. A lew words of their speech, which were obtained, established this 

 fact. The Araucano tongue is well known through the works of Molina, Faulkner, and 

 especially Febres, who, in his " Arte de la lengua general de Chile" has given us one of 

 those complete manuals of the language for which the Jesuit missionaries were distin- 

 guished. The only points on which it will be of any use to touch are some peculiarities 

 in the pronunciation, which require to be explained. 



