THE FUEGIANS 137 
of iEolus, or to see a squall or Williewaw, as they are called, 
strike the Terror, heel her over for a minute, and rush on 
till it met the steady gale outside, of which we felt nothing. 
On the hills its effects were also very remarkable, especially 
high up near the Gorges, where the trees which met it in its 
first burst would be all shattered, and lay in every direction 
for an acre perhaps ; these, too, are sturdy, tough, stag- headed 
little obstinate trees whose splintered trunks, though only a 
few inches (8-14) in diameter, show that their mettle is good. 
The poor Fuegians of course attracted our attention 
before anything else, and surely they are the most degraded 
savages that I ever set eyes upon. They are considered 
as the lowest in the stage of civihsation of all nations under 
the sun, — the Tasmanians, now banished from that Island, 
alone excepted. They inhabit various scattered parts of the 
coast in separate tribes, said to be at war with one another. 
Those we saw amount to about twenty and are said to be 
confined to Hermite Island. They have wigwams made 
of nothing but a few branches arranged in the form of a 
beehive in the woods close to the sea, — there are two or three 
of them in almost every bay of the Islands, and they wander 
either across the hills or in their canoes from one to another. 
These canoes are the most useful articles they possess, though 
very clumsily made of the Bark of trees sewn together 
over a framework. The bottom is plastered with white 
clay, of which a supply is always kept on board to stop a 
leak — they take great care of their boats, and whenever they 
haul them up, which is the women's duty, they make a sort 
of road of smooth pebbles up the beach, and then cut 
quantities of seaweed over which they drag the boat up high 
and dry. Little baskets made of rushes woven together, 
and a drinking cup cut out of the root of a Laminaria, are 
the only domestic utensils, — wood ashes and clay used as 
a pigment and a few shells strung on seal sinews their only 
ornament, whilst their only weapons are a long shng and 
a very long spear of wood with a bone head so fitted on to 
the shaft that on striking a seal or penguin the shaft falls 
out and remains attached to the head by a piece of sinew, 
and thus encumbers the animal by floating. These Fuegians 
wear no clothing whatever either in Winter or Summer 
except such as are given them by us, — more apparently for 
