226 
TIERRA DEL FUEGO 
CHAP. 
their canoes to catch seal. A small party of these men one 
morning set out, and the other Indians explained to him that 
they were going a four days’ journey for food : on their return, 
Low went to meet them, and he found them excessively tired, 
each man carrying a great square piece of putrid whales-blubber 
with a hole in the middle, through which they put their heads, 
like the Gauchos do through their ponchos or cloaks. As soon 
as the blubber was brought into a wigwam, an old man cut off 
thin slices, and muttering over them, broiled them for a minute, 
and distributed them to the famished party, who during this 
time preserved a profound silence. Mr. Low believes that 
whenever a whale is cast on shore, the natives bury large pieces 
of it in the sand, as a resource in time of famine ; and a native 
boy, whom he had on board, once found a stock thus buried. 
The different tribes when at war are cannibals. From the con¬ 
current, but quite independent evidence of the boy taken by 
Mr. Low, and of Jemmy Button, it is certainly true, that when 
pressed in winter by hunger they kill and devour their old 
women before they kill their dogs : the boy, being asked by Mr. 
Low why they did this, answered, “ Doggies catch otters, old 
women no.” This boy described the manner in which they are 
killed by being held over smoke and thus choked ; he imitated 
their screams as a joke, and described the parts of their bodies 
which are considered best to eat. Horrid as such a death by the 
hands of their friends and relatives must be, the fears of the old 
women, when hunger begins to press, are more painful to think 
of; we were told that they then often run away into the moun¬ 
tains, but that they are pursued by the men and brought back 
to the slaughter-house at their own firesides ! 
Captain Fitz Roy could never ascertain that the Fuegians have 
any distinct belief in a future life. They sometimes bury their 
dead in caves, and sometimes in the mountain forests ; we do not 
know what ceremonies they perform. Jemmy Button would not 
eat land-birds, because “ eat dead men they are unwilling even 
to mention their dead friends. We have no reason to believe 
that they perform any sort of religious worship ; though perhaps 
the muttering of the old man before he distributed the putrid 
blubber to his famished party may be of this nature. Each 
family or tribe has a wizard or conjuring doctor, whose office 
we could never clearly ascertain. Jemmy believed in dreams. 
