loo THROUGH THE HEART OF PATAGONIA 



maux. The Esquimaux has never seen a horse, the Tehuelche 

 never uses a boat, although his land abounds in sheets of water. 

 Both races are eminently sluggish and peaceable. Both fear evil 

 spirits, which they fancy live in particular localities. It is indeed 

 a far cry from Greenland to Patagonia, but if you substitute the 

 horse for the kayak and the seal for the guanaco, you will find that, 

 although separated by space and race and circumstance, a certain 

 resemblance between the people of the Far South and of the Far 

 North exists. And of both races little evil can be said. 



These primitive peoples, living close to nature, divided from 

 man's original state only by the thinnest and filmiest of partitions, 

 attain in a wonderful degree the art of doing without things. T he 

 Esquimaux starts upon a long day's hunting, with the thermometer 

 marking many degrees below zero, upon nothing save a drink of 

 water! A luxury such as coffee is said to enervate him.* The 

 Patagonian Indian rides out of a morning having taken nothing at 

 all in the way of sustenance. But he puts a pinch of salt in his 

 belt, and when his dogs pull down their first guanaco or ostrich, 

 he draws off the blood and swallows it mixed with salt. 



The tribes live to a considerable extent on guanaco, and it is 

 practically their life-work to follow the wanderings of the herds 

 through the changing seasons. But the flesh of the ostrich is 

 more palatable, and is, consequently, preferred when it can be pro- 

 cured. They drink mat^ in large quantities, which, as has been 

 shown, is the universal habit on the pampas, where it is, in fact, 

 indispensable, supplying, as it does, to a certain extent, the place 

 of vegetables, besides having the valuable quality of refreshing 

 and invigorating in a quite extraordinary degree. 



They rarely smoke pure tobacco ; it is too precious. They 

 mix it with about 80 per cent, of califate-wood shavings. Once, 

 when short of tobacco, I tried their mixture, and in truth there are 

 many worse smokes upon the English and American markets. 

 The califate is certainly a little acrid, but burns with a very blue 

 smoke. I fancy one could get on tolerably well with this faked 

 tobacco, aided by a bit of imagination and a strong throat. 



For the most part the tribes use stone pipes of a very singular 



* Nansen's " Esquimaux Life." 



