138 SOUTH AGAIN : NEW ZEALAND AND THE CAPE 



ornament than comfort. The men do Httle or nothing except 

 a seal or such hke comes in their way, whilst the women are 

 employed collecting limpets and mussels, which are eaten 

 raw or half-cooked and form the largest proportion of their 

 food ; to do this the poor things have to go every day often 

 up to their middles in water, — snow falHng heavily at times, 

 and with a young child slung to their backs. Their manners 

 are little above the brutes, filthy and squalid to a degree, 

 and they will eat anything but salt meat that we offered 

 them. They are all great thieves and excellent imitators 

 both of language and action, though they have never im- 

 proved themselves permanently from their intercourse with 

 Europeans. Their language is a most horrible, guttural 

 concatenation of sounds and unUke the New Zealanders, 

 whose tongue is harmonious and beautiful to the ear, — 

 they, as I said before, imitate a sentence of any language 

 readily, whilst few of the N. Zealanders can pronounce 

 I of the Enghsh words. 



Our walks were of course confined to the Island, and 

 there was not much of general interest to attract attention. 

 Beginning a walk was the worst part, as one must tear 

 through the dense wood and force a passage up the hills, 

 — ^the ridges are generally bare of wood and easily walked 

 over to some distance, but whenever the valley comes wood 

 is sure to be packed into it. Of Mosses, Lichens, &c., there 

 are a profusion, and the collecting them kept me constantly 

 at work. Above the wood, however, the rocks are very 

 bare, from the frequent heavy snow storms, which often 

 overtook us on the hills and made the walk back very un- 

 pleasant, the wind clogging it on our persons. Nothing, 

 however, but personal weakness, or too sudden a change, 

 would have made Sir J. Banks feel their effects so much, 

 for we thought nothing of it, and were it necessary, even 

 without ft fire, a shelter might be made, which with the 

 warmth of two or three persons close together, might have 

 defied death by cold. 



Writing to Mrs. Boott, November 28, 1842, he insists further 

 on this point. 



This part of the world (Fuegia) has always borne the 

 character of being eminently rigorous and inhospitable, — 



