216 TIERRA DEL FUEGO, [ CULAR. x. 
is the coast, that they can only move about in their wretched 
canoes. ‘They cannot know the feeling of having a home, and 
still less that of domestic affection; for the husband is to the 
wife a brutal master to a laborious slave. Wasa more horrid 
deed ever perpetrated, than that witnessed on the west coast by 
Byron, who saw a wretched mother pick up her bleeding dying 
infant-boy, whom her husband had mercilessly dashed on the’ 
stones for dropping a basket of sea-eggs! How little can the 
higher powers of the mind be brought into play: what is there 
for imagination to picture, for reason to compare, for judgment 
to decide upon? to knock a limpet from the rock does not require 
even cunning, that lowest power of the mind. Their skill in 
some respects may be compared to the instinct of animals; for 
it is not improved by experience: the canoe, their most inge- 
nious work, poor as it is, has remained the same, as we know 
from Drake, for the last two hundred and fifty years. 
Whilst beholding these savages, one asks, whence have they 
come? What could have tempted, or what change compelled a 
tribe of men, to leave the fine regions of the north, to travel 
down the Cordillera or backbone of America, to invent and 
build canoes, which are not used by the tribes of Chile, Peru, 
and Brazil, and then to enter on one of the most inhospitable 
countries within the limits of the globe? Although such re- 
flections must at first seize on the mind, yet we may feel sure 
that they are partly erroneous. | ‘There is no reason to believe 
that the Fuegians decrease in number; therefore we must sup- 
pose that they enjoy a sufficient share of happiness, of whatever 
kind it may be, to render life worth having. Nature by making 
habit omnipotent, and its effects hereditary, has fitted the Fue-_ 
gian to the climate and the productions of his miserable country. — 
we 
After having been detained six days in Wigwam Cove by very 
bad weather, we put to sea on the 80th of December. Captain 
Fitz Roy wished to get westward to land York and Fuegia in 
their own country. When at sea we had a constant succession 
of gales, and the current was against us: we drifted to 57° 23° 
south. On the 11th of January, 1833, by carrying a press of 
sail, we fetched within a few miles of the great rugged mountain 
of York Minster (so called by Captain Cook, and the origin of 
