RELIGION OF THE FUEGIANS. 277 



leathers blown by the wind. His brother said 

 (York imitating his manner), "What thatl" and 

 crawling onwards, he peeped over the clift", and 

 saw " wild man" picking his birds ; he crawled a 

 little nearer, and then hurled down a great stone 

 and killed him. York declaimed for a long time 

 afterwards storms raged, and much rain and snow 

 fell. As far as we could make out, he seemed to 

 consider the elements themselves as the avenging 

 agents : it is evident in this case how naturally, in 

 a race a little more advanced in culture, the ele- 

 ments would become personified. What the " bad 

 wild men" were has always appeared to me most 

 mysterious : from what Y^ork said, when we found 

 the place like the form of a hare, where a single 

 man had slept the night before, I should have thought 

 that they were thieves who had been driven from 

 their tribes ; but other obscure speeches made me 

 doubt this: I have sometimes imagined that the 

 most probable explanation was that they were in- 

 sane. 



The different tribes have no government or chief; 

 yet each is suiTounded by other hostile tribes, 

 speaking different dialects, and separated from each 

 other only by a deserted border or neutral territory : 

 the cause of their warfare appears to be the means 

 of subsistence. Theiv country is a broken mass of 

 wild rocks, lofty hills, and useless forests ; and these 

 are viewed through mists and endless stonns. The 

 habitable land is reduced to the stones on the beach; 

 in search of food they are compelled unceasingly to 

 wander from spot to spot, and so steep is the coast, 

 that they can only move about in their wi'etched 

 canoes. They cannot know the feeling of having a 

 ];ome, and still less that of domestic affection ; for 

 the husband is to the wife a brutal master to a la- 

 borious slave. Was a more horrid deed ever per- 

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