226 TIERRA DEL FUEGO chap. 



their canoes to catch seal. A small party of these men one 

 morning set out, and the other Indians explained to him that 

 they were going a four days' journey for food : on their return, 

 Low went to meet them, and he found them excessively tired, 

 each man carrying a great square piece of putrid whales -blubber 

 with a hole in the middle, through which they put their heads, 

 like the Gauchos do through their ponchos or cloaks. As soon 

 as the blubber was brought into a wigwam, an old man cut off 

 thin slices, and muttering over them, broiled them for a minute, 

 and distributed them to the famished party, who during this 

 time preserved a profound silence. Mr. Low believes that 

 whenever a whale is cast on shore, the natives bury large pieces 

 of it in the sand, as a resource in time of famine ; and a native 

 boy, whom he had on board, once found a stock thus buried. 

 The different tribes when at war are cannibals. From the con- 

 current, but quite independent evidence of the boy taken by 

 Mr. Low, and of Jemmy Button, it is certainly true, that when 

 pressed in winter by hunger they kill and devour their old 

 women before they kill their dogs : the boy, being asked by Mr. 

 Low why they did this, answered, " Doggies catch otters, old 

 women no." This boy described the manner in which they are 

 killed by being held over smoke and thus choked ; he imitated 

 their screams as a joke, and described the parts of their bodies 

 which are considered best to eat. Horrid as such a death by the 

 hands of their friends and relatives must be, the fears of the old 

 women, when hunger begins to press, are more painful to think 

 of ; we were told that they then often run away into the moun- 

 tains, but that they are pursued by the men and brought back 

 to the slaughter-house at their own firesides ! 



Captain Fitz Roy could never ascertain that the Fuegians have 

 any distinct belief in a future life. They sometimes bury their 

 dead in caves, and sometimes in the mountain forests ; we do not 

 know what ceremonies they perform. Jemmy Button would not 

 eat land -birds, because " eat dead men "; they are unwilling even 

 to mention their dead friends. We have no reason to believe 

 that they perform any sort of religious worship ; though perhaps 

 the muttering of the old man before he distributed the putrid 

 blubber to his famished party may be of this nature. Each 

 family or tribe has a wizard or conjuring doctor, whose office 

 we could never clearly ascertain. Jemmy believed in dreams, 



