194 FALKLAND ISLANDS. [cHap. Ix. 
West Falkland. I have no doubt it isa peculiar species, and 
confined to this archipelago; because many sealers, Gauchos, 
and Indians, who have visited these islands, all maintain that no 
such animal is found in any part of South America. Mbolina, 
from a similarity in habits, thought that this was the same with 
his “culpeu ;” * but I have seen both, and they are quite distinct. 
These wolves are well known, from Byron’s account of their 
tameness and curiosity, which the sailors, who ran into the 
water to avoid them, mistook for fierceness. To this day their 
manners remain the same. They have been observed to enter a 
tent, and actually pull some meat from beneath the head of a 
sleeping seaman. The Gauchos also- have frequently in the 
evening killed them, by holding out a piece of meat in one hand, 
and in the other a knife ready to stick them. As far as Iam 
aware, there is no other.instance in any part of the world, of so 
small a mass of broken land, distant from a continent, possessing 
so large an aboriginal quadruped peculiar to itself. Their num- 
bers have rapidly decreased; they are already banished from that 
half of the island which lies to the eastward of the neck of land 
between St. Salvador Bay and Berkeley Sound. Within a very 
few years after these islands shall have become regularly settled, 
in all probability this fox will be classed with the dodo, as an 
animal which has perished from the face of the earth. 
At night (17th) we slept on the neck of land at the head of 
Choiseul Sound, which forms the south-west peninsula, The 
valley was pretty well sheltered from the cold wind ; but there 
was very little brushwood for fuel. The Gauchos, however, soon 
found what, to my great surprise, made nearly as hot a fire as 
coals ; this was the skeleton of a bullock lately killed, from which 
the flesh had been picked by the carrion-hawks. They told me 
that in winter they often killed a beast, cleaned the flesh from the 
bones with their knives, and then with these same bones roastee 
the meat for their suppers. 
18¢h.—It rained during nearly the whole day. At night we 
managed, however, with our saddle-cloths to keep ourselves 
pretty well dry and warm; but the ground on which we slept 
was on each occasion nearly in the state of a bog, and there was 
* The “culpeu” is the Canis Magellanicus brought home by Captain 
King from the Strait of Magellan. it is common in Chile. 
