APPEARANCE. 433 



very intelligible to the nations of the South Sea." Wallis, 

 in his " Yoyage Round the World," * describes them as 

 follows : " They were covered with seal-skins, which stunk 

 abominably, and some of them were eating the rotten flesh 

 and blubber raw, with a keen appetite and great seeming 

 satisfaction." And again he says : " Some of our people, 

 who were fishing with a hook and line, gave one of them a 

 fish, somewhat bigger than a herring, alive, just as it came 

 out of the water. The Indian took it hastily, as a dog would 

 take a bone, and instantly killed it, by giving it a bite near 

 the gills : he then proceeded to eat it, beginning with the 

 head, and going on to the tail, without rejecting either the 

 bones, fins, scales, or entrails."f Their cookery is, if possible, 

 still more disgusting. Fitzroy tells us that it was "too 

 offensive" for description; and the account given by Byron J 

 entirely confirms this statement. 



The men, says Fitzroy, "are low in stature, ill-looking, 

 and badly proportioned. Their colour is that, of very old 

 mahogany or rather between dark copper and bronze. The 

 trunk of the body is large, in proportion to their cramped 

 and rather crooked limbs. Their rough, coarse and extremely 

 dirty black hair half hides, yet heightens, a villainous expres- 

 sion of the worst description of savage features. The hair of 

 the women is longer, less coarse, and certainly cleaner than 

 that of the men. It is combed with the jaw of a porpoise, 

 but neither plaited nor tied ; and none is cut away, excepting 

 from over their eyes. They are short, with bodies largely 

 out of proportion to their height ; their features, especially 

 those of the old, are scarcely less disagreeable than the re- 

 pulsive ones of the men. About four feet and some inches is 

 the stature of these she-Fuegians by courtesy called women- 



* Hawkesworth's Voyages, I.e. p. 403. f I.e. p. 403. 



} Byron's Loss of the "Wager, p. 132. 



Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, vol. ii., p. 137. 



28 



