134 Distinctive characteristics of the 



boats hewn with comparative ingenuity from a single plank, and 

 compared to a butcher's tray ; but in these frail vessels they keep 

 cautiously within sight of land, and never venture on the water unless 

 the weather is favourable to their enterprise. It is to be observed, 

 however, that when the Indians are compelled to carry their boats 

 across portages from river to river, they construct them of birch bark, 

 and with a degree of ingenuity and adaptation much above their 

 usual resources. Thus boats that would carry nine men do not weigh 

 over sixty pounds, and are therefore conveyed with ease to consi- 

 derable distances. This is almost the only deviation from the log 

 canoe, and is equally characteristic ; for it is common among the 

 interior Indians of both North and South America, and was noticed 

 by De Solis in the Mexican provinces. 



Inferior in these respects to the other tribes are the Fuegians ; 

 a people whom perpetual exposure and privation, and the influence 

 of an inhospitable climate have reduced to a feeble intelligence, — the 

 moral childhood of their race. Not even the stimulus of necessity 

 has been able to excite that ingenuity which would so amply provide 

 for all their wants ; and they starve amid the abundant stores of the 

 ocean, because they possess no adequate means for obtaining them. 

 The Falkland and Malouine islands in but fifty degrees of South 

 latitude, South Georgia, New South Shetland, and some smaller 

 islands in nearly the same parallel, were at their discovery, entirely 

 uninhabited ; nor is there any evidence of their ever having been 

 visited by any American tribe. Yet they possess seals and other 

 marine animals in vast numbers, and in these and all other respects 

 appear to be not less productive than the region inhabited by the 

 Eskimaux. 



It is generally supposed that nautical enterprise results from the 

 necessity of the case, in nations proximate to, or surrounded by the 

 sea. We have seen, however, that the natives of the islands of the 

 Gulf of Mexico were exceptions to the rule ; and we find another 

 not less remarkable in the archipelago of Chiloe, on the coast of 

 Chili. These islands are seen from the shore, and have a large 

 Indian population which depends for subsistence on fish taken from 

 the surrounding ocean ; yet even so late as the close of the past 

 century, after more than two hundred years of communication with 



