322 BIMANA. 



The neck is short and strong ; the shoulders square and high; the chest 

 and body large'; and the trunk long, compared with the limbs and head. 

 The arms and legs are rounder, and less sinewy and muscular, than those 

 of Europeans ; the joints are smaller, and the calves of the legs less 

 developed : the knees are, it is stated, strained by the custom of sitting 

 continually on the heels, so that when straightened, the skin is wrinkled, 

 and thrown into folds, both above and below the joint ; the legs are also 

 rather bowed, and the feet turned inward. Ornaments of feathers are 

 attached to a fillet made of the sinews of animals, and worn round the 

 head. White feathers denote hostility ; red feathers are the emblem of 

 peace. Red ochre, as a paint, is profusely used ; but, when preparing for 

 war, white paint is added : daubs of black, the paint being made from 

 charcoal mixed with grease, are the tokens of mourning. 



Among the Fuegians, as above described, individuals occur with curly 

 or frizzled hair, with rather high foreheads, and straight or aquiline 

 noses, and who, in other features, resemble the natives of New Zealand, 

 rather than the Fuegians. These are, probably, the descendants of Malay 

 stragglers, or of people of some of the Polynesian Islands, who, at no 

 distant period, have been driven upon this extreme portion of America, 

 and whose features are not lost in the mixed race which has originated 

 from their union with the indigenes. 



In the gulf of Trinidad, lat. 50, on the eastern coast of Patagonia, 

 Lieut. Skyring met two canoes of Indians, taller and more finely formed 

 than those of the Chonos Islands, or any of the Fuegian tribes that had 

 been seen : one man among them had a high leathern cap, ornamented 

 with feathers of gaudy colours, and was painted black from head to foot, 

 with a circle of white round each eye. It is a curious circumstance, that 

 three of the men had each lost an upper incisor tooth, which calls to 

 mind the custom practised among the Australian savages, of having one 

 of the upper incisors extracted, on arriving at manhood. 



For farther interesting and valuable information respecting the Pata- 

 gonian tribes, and the indigenes of Tierra del Fuego, and of the various 

 adjacent clusters of islands, reference may be made to the Voyages of the 

 Adventure and Beagle, by Captains King and Fitzroy, in which works their 

 habits, customs, and ceremonies are graphically detailed. 



The skull of a Patagonian (supposed of a female), in the museum of 

 the Royal College of Surgeons, is remarkable for its great breadth and 

 rotundity, and its posterior compression ; the depth from the vertex to 

 the base being very considerable. The forehead is broad and arched an 

 unusual character in the Patagonian skull; the vertex, at the anterior 

 part of the parietal bones, is slightly elevated, with a slope, rather 

 flat on each side. The centre of each parietal bone is boldly pro- 

 minent ; the orbits are large, ample, and projecting ; and the zygomatic 



