236 



TIERRA DEL FUEGO. 



Dec. 1832. 



ably the same question may be asked with respect to these 

 barbarians. At nighty five or six human beings^ naked and 

 scarcely protected from the wind and rain of this tem- 

 pestuous climate, sleep on the wet ground coiled up like 

 animals. Whenever it is low water, they must rise to pick 

 shell-fish from the rocks ; and the women, winter and 

 summer, either dive to collect sea eggs, or sit patiently in 

 their canoes, and, with a baited hair-line, jerk out small fish. 

 If a seal is killed, or the floating carcass of a putrid whale 

 discovered, it is a feast : such miserable food is assisted by 

 a few tasteless berries and fungi. Nor are they exempt 

 from famine, and, as a consequence, cannibalism accom- 

 panied by parricide. 



The tribes have no government or head, yet each is sur- 

 rounded by other hostile ones, speaking different dialects ; 

 and the cause of their warfare would appear to be the means 

 of subsistence. Their country is a broken mass of wild 

 rock, lofty hills, and useless forests : and these are viewed 

 through mists and endless storms. The habitable land is 

 reduced to the stones which form the beach ; in search of 

 food they are compelled to wander from spot to spot, and 

 so steep 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 ; unless indeed 

 the treatment of a master to a laborious slave can be considered 

 as such. 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 even require cunning, 

 that lowest power of the mind. Their skill in some respects 

 may be compared to the instinct of animals ; for it is not im- 

 proved by experience : the canoe, their most ingenious 

 work, poor as it is, has remained the same, 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 



