2i8 RELIGION OF THE FUEGIANS. [chap. x. 



"wild man" picking his birds; he crawled a little nearer, 

 and then hurled down a great stone and killed him. 

 York declared 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, irl a race a little more advanced in culture, the 

 elements would become personified. What the "bad 

 wild men" were has always appeared to me most 

 mysterious; from what York 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 insane. 



The different tribes have no government or chief; yet 

 each is surrounded 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. Their 

 country is a broken mass of wild rocks, lofty hills, and 

 useless forests ; and these are viewed through mists and 

 endless storms. 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 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 ol 

 animals ; for it is not improved by experience : the canoe, 

 their most ingenious work, poor as it is, has remained 

 the same, as we know from Drake, for the last two 

 hundred and fifty years. 



