446 



SOUTH AMERICA— THE ANDES EEGIONS. 



Fig. 168.— Tndigenotjs Popu- 

 lations or Chili. 



Scale 1 : 37,000,000. 



If this system of reprisals is continued all must soon perish except the 

 children and the young women employed about the farmsteads, who will be 

 rapidly absorbed in the already half-caste Argentine settlers. The Onas resemble 

 the Patagonian Tehuel-ches in height, appearance and pursuits, and like them, 



they live on the flesh of the guanaco, which they 

 capture with bow and arrows. The languages are 

 sufficiently near for the tribes to be mutually intel- 

 ligible, but the Ona pronunciation is so harsh that 

 Bridges compares it to the noise produced by a 

 man gargling under difficulties. 



The only natives of Tierra del Fuego entitled 

 to be called " Fuegians " in the sense of aborigines 

 are the nomads who have their camping-grounds 

 in the western and southern parts of the archipel- 

 ago. There are two distinct groups, the western 

 Alakalufs and the Southern Yahgans, the Teke- 

 nikas of the early writers, both probably descended 

 from a primeval American race, who formerly 

 peopled the whole of the continent south of the 

 Amazons. Their small stature, averaging about 

 4 feet 6 inches, presents a striking contrast to that 

 of the Ona descendants of the gigantic Patagonians. 

 They differ also in the form of the head, which 

 is disproportionately large, and the face, which 

 appears to be angular, and often of the^ lozenge 

 type. The low narrow forehead surmounts small 

 black eyes, usually well formed, but at times with 

 oblique lids. The short, crushed nose, depressed at 

 the root, terminates in very wide nostrils, and the 

 mouth, usually very large, is a highly characteristic 

 feature, with thick, pouting lips. The sonorous 

 Yahgan language has 44 distinct sounds and, 

 according to Bridges, a vocabulary of at least 

 30,000 words.* 



The Yahgans, who constitute the most numerous 

 section of the Fuegiau race, have been wrongly 

 described as cannibals by Fitzroy and Darwin. 

 They eat neither the aged nor their enemies, as 

 has been often asserted, and their chief food consists of shellfish, especially 

 mussels, as showTi by the huge shell- mounds in the vicinity of their camping- 

 grounds. They wear no clothes beyond the skins of animals, thrown loosely 



* This statement of the Rev. Mr. Bridges has been received with the utmost surprise by philo- 

 logists, and must clearly rest on some strange misconception. Probably the endless changes in the 

 Yahgan verb, due to the incorporating process of all polysynthetic languages, have been mistaken for 

 separate words.- — Ed. 



1 220 Miles. 



