THE MONGOLIAN RACE. 



17 



PATAGONIA, 



I was again unsuccessful in meeting with aboriginals during our 

 short and interrupted visit to the Rio Negro, in North Patagonia; 

 but I learned that some civilized natives were residing at the Spanish 

 village, about twenty miles from the mouth of the river. 



Incursions are sometimes made by distant tribes, for the purpose of 

 stealing horses ; and one of the pilots had been in a conflict with a 

 party of these marauders. He represented them as being "all horse- 

 men, armed only with a long pike. They use the war-cry of ' cha 

 cha,' and they charge in a body at a chosen point, too impetuously to 

 be resisted ; but having broken through the opposing line, they con- 

 tinue their course without giving further trouble." 



Mr. Coan, of the Hawaiian mission, once spent some months in 

 Southern Patagonia, with the tribe bordering on the Straits of 

 Magellan, (the same repeatedly mentioned in the Voyage of the 

 Beagle), and I am indebted to him for the following particulars. 

 " The Patagonian tribes do not appear to have bloody wars ; but he 

 once witnessed a severe fight between two individuals, unarmed. 

 The stature of these people is nothing unusual, but it is exaggerated 

 by their peculiar mode of dress. They are all horsemen, but having 

 no canoes, they cannot pass the Straits : the Fuegians do this some- 

 times, when they are seized and reduced to slavery. The Araucanians 

 never cross the Andes into this country, neither do the Patagonians 

 visit theirs. A native, wdio was acquainted with the whole of Pata- 

 gonia, and who had acquired some Spanish words at the settlements 

 on Rio Negro, informed Mr. Coan that he once made the attempt; and 

 that he ' reached a place beyond which his horse could not proceed 

 from the want of feed, and further on there was only snow." 



THE ANTARCTIC OR MAGELLANIC WATERMEN. 



The great chain of the Andes, considered as continuous throughout 

 all America, terminates with singular symmetry, North and South, 

 in a high broken border-archipelago; presenting a labyrinth of sounds 

 and channels that affords room for the development of a maritime 

 population. 



5 



