INHABITANTS OF CHILI. 447 



over the shoulders and shifted according to the direction of the wind. The 

 explorers by whom they have been visited have collected no legends or any 

 folklore regarding their origin and migrations, nor is there anything to show 

 that they worship a Supreme Being. Nevertheless, they believe in a future life, 

 and the unknown causes a sort of religious awe, for they speak of ghosts, who at 

 times attack and devour the living. 



The dead are either burned, or buried under the shell-mounds. There are no 

 proper or family names, and in conversation they designate each other by the 

 place they occupy, or by some other detail. They sing, or at least hum, incessantly 

 repeating the same word or syllable ; but they never dance. The social circle 

 is, in fact, too fragmentary for any collective demonstrations, in which mutual 

 sympathy and the aesthetic sense play such a large part. 



Since the arrival of the English missionaries in the archipelago the mortality 

 has been frightful, the natives having been more than decimated by typhoid, 

 small-pox and consumption. Those patients, however, who escape from the 

 stations and resume the savage life exposed to cold, wind and storms, have some 

 chance of recovery. 



The Alakalufs, who, according to Bridges, number only about 150 persons, 

 formerly occupied a far more extensive territory than at present along the shores 

 of Magellan Strait. They are the Pesherais of Bougainville, King and Fitzroy, 

 being so called from, a word which they have perpetually on their lips. Essen- 

 tially a fishing folk, they build large skiffs, in which they venture on the high 

 seas as far as the remotest islands of the archipelago in quest of seals and aquatic 

 birds. They live chiefly on mussels and fish, although they also pursue the guanaco 

 with bow and arrows. 



Their language differs altogether from that of the Yahgans (Yamana, 

 *' Men "), southernmost of the American aborigines. But both groups lead the 

 same existence, have the same appearance, and must be regarded as belonging to 

 the same ethnical stock. They have often been described as scarcely belonging to 

 humanity at all, as a sort of " primates " scarcely higher in the ascending scale 

 than the ape, incapable even of development, or of being trained as the animal 

 is trained. The contrary, however, has been proved by the efforts made by Mr. 

 Bridges and other devoted missionaries to educate them. The Fuegians are 

 assuredly human beings, and their destruction would be as much a crime as was 

 that of the Tasmanians and of so many other primitive peoples exterminated by 

 the whites. 



The Chiltans. 



All these southern groups — Onas, Yahgans, Alakalufs — constitute but an 

 infinitesimal section of the Chilian nation, in the formation of which the Arau- 

 canians, the Molu-ches and other northern aborigines have had a large share. 

 The white invaders all took native wives, and Inez Suarez, who arrived in 1541, 

 was the first Spanish woman who settled in the colony. More Indian than 



