ARMS — women's dress. 



149 



useless — perhaps become encumbrances to their owners, who^ 

 if they do not turn and dash off at full speed, have recourse to 

 their balls or to swords. Some have swords obtained from 

 white men ; others fasten long blades (knife-blades, perhaps, or 

 pieces of iron hoop^; straightened and sharpened) to handles three 

 or four feet in length. Their bows are three or four feet long ; 

 and the arrows, about two feet in length, are headed with 

 small triangular pieces of agate, jasper, obsidian, or even 

 bone. But bows, arrows, shields, clubs, and heavy armour are 

 daily less used ; and may we not infer, that arms and armour, 

 suited to foot encounters — such as arrows, heavy clubs or 

 maces, shields, and many-fold tunics — have been laid aside by 

 degrees, as horses have multiplied in the country ? Fighting 

 on foot is now seldom practised, except in personal quarrels. 

 Falkner says, they used to envenom the points of their arrows 

 with a species of poison, which destroyed so slowly, that the 

 wounded person lingered for two or three months, till, reduced 

 to a skeleton, he at last expired ; but I have not heard of 

 such a practice among the southern aborigines in these days. 



Those Indians who have felt the effects of fire-arms, and 

 own abundance of horses, the men of Araucania, who are the 

 terror of the Pampa tribes, have long abolished armour and 

 the arms of former wars — wars so well sung by Ercilla, in 

 which they gained unfading honour in maintaining the free- 

 dom of their country. Naked on their horses, armed with 

 lances, swords, and balJs, those men now rush like the whirl- 

 wind — destroy — and are gone ! 



The women of Patagonia wear nothing on their heads ; their 

 hair, parted before and behind, is gathered into two large 

 tresses, one on each side. Ear-ornaments, necklaces, bracelets, 

 and anklets, made of beads, pieces of brass, silver, or gold, 

 are much esteemed. Their mantles are similar to those of the 

 men ; but they are pinned across the breast by a wooden 

 skewer, or a metal pin, and are gathered about the waist, 

 hanging loosely almost to their ankles. A short apron, or 

 half-petticoat, made with skins of small animals, or coarse cloth, 

 is tied about their waist, under the mantle. It only covers 

 them in front, and reaches to the knee. Boots, similar to those 



