PATAGONIA AND THE PATAGONIANS. 



421 



certain, that the Patagonians are a fine athletic race of men, with remarkably 

 broad shoulders and thick muscular limbs. The head is long, broad, and flat, 

 and the forehead low, with the hair growing within an inch of the eyebrows, 

 which are bare ; the eyes are often placed obliquely, and have but little expres- 

 sion ; the forehead and the large lips are prominent, so that if a perpendicular 

 line were drawn between the two, the thick flat nose would hardly reach it, and 

 but seldom project beyond it. In sjjite of these coarse features the physiogno- 

 my of the young girls is by no means unpleasant, as it has an amiable, lively ex- 

 pression. All of them have small hands and feet, and D'Orbigny says that 

 they have the finest shapes of all the savages he saw. Though they have a 

 wide mouth and thick lips, this fault is redeemed by their beautiful white teeth, 

 which never fall out even in old age. 



The color of the Patagonians is much darker than that of the Pampas In- 

 dians and others farther to the north, and most closely resembles that of the 

 mulatto ; a fact totally at variance with the common belief that the darkness 

 of the human skin increases on approaching the equator. 



The chief garment is the manuhe, a wide, square mantle — eight feet long and 

 nearly as broad — which they wear after the fashion of the ancient Greeks and 

 Romans, with one end hanging down to the earth. It generally consists of 

 guanaco skins neatly sewn together with ostrich sinews. In cold weather the 

 manuhe, which serves also as a blanket, is worn with the hair inside ; the even 

 surface is therefore ornamented with red drawings. Sometimes they wear 

 boots of horse-leather, like the Gauchos, from whom they have learned to make 

 them ; formei'ly sandals of guanaco skin were alone in use. Their long black 

 hair is tied behind with a thong of leather or a piece of ribbon; the women 

 plait and adorn it with a number of ornaments of glass and copper. The tace 

 is generally painted red, white, and black, and a Patagonian is never seen with- 

 out the little pouch in which he carries the necessary colors. A remarkable 

 custom, common to all the Indian tribes as far as Bolivia, is that of eradicating 

 the hairs of the beard, and the men may frequently be seen plucking them out 

 with a pair of pincers. 



The religious ideas of the Patagonians greatly resemble those of their neigh- 

 bors the Aucas and the Puelches. The divine Achekenat Kanet is reverenced 

 as the genius of both good and evil ; but beside this chief deity they have a 

 number of inferior spirits, generally of a malignant nature, which can be held 

 in check only by the arts of their magicians. Like the shamans, or medicine- 

 men of the north, these impostors work themselves into an ecstatic state, in 

 which they predict things to come, or announce the will of the unseen gods ; 

 but their trade does not seem to be very lucrative if we may judge from the 

 bad condition of their mantles. They also act as physicians, for all diseases 

 are invariably ascribed to the agency of evil spirits. 



The Patagonians are quite as superstitious as the Indians of the high north- 

 ern latitudes. They seldom cut their hair, but when they do, they cast it into 

 the river or carefully burn it, so that it may not fall into the hands of some ma- 

 lignant magician, who might use it to the hurt of its quondam owner. When, 

 on journeying along a river, they see some trunks of trees descending with the 



