216 TIERRA DEL FUEGO. [chap. x. 



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 inge- 

 nious 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 of 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 re- 

 flections 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 sup- 

 pose 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 Fue- 

 gian to the climate and the productions of his miserable country. 



After having been detained six days in Wigwam Cove by very 

 bad weather, we put to sea on the 30th of December. Captain 

 Fitz Roy wished to get westward to land York and Fuegia in 

 their own country. When at sea we had a constant succession 

 of gales, and the current was against us : we drifted to 57° 23' 

 south. On the 11th of January, !833, by carrying a press of 

 Rail, we fetched within a few miles cf the great rugged mountain 

 of York Minster (so called by Captain Cook, and the origin of 



