228 
TIERRA DEL FUEGO 
CHAP. 
still less that of domestic affection ; for the husband is to the 
wife a brutal master to a laborious slave. Was a more horrid 
deed ever perpetrated, than that witnessed on the west coast by 
Byron, who saw a wretched mother pick up her bleeding dying 
infant-boy, whom her husband had mercilessly dashed on the 
stones for dropping a basket of sea-eggs ! 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 
require even cunning, that lowest power of the mind. Their 
skill in some respects may be compared to the instinct of 
animals ; for it is not improved by experience : the canoe, 
their most ingenious work, poor as it is, has remained the same, 
as we know from Drake, 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 the north, to travel 
down the Cordillera or backbone of America, to invent and 
build canoes, which are not used by the tribes of Chile, Peru, 
and Brazil, and then to enter on one of the most inhospitable 
countries within the limits of the globe ? Although such 
reflections must at first seize on the mind, yet we may feel sure 
that they are partly erroneous. There is no reason to believe 
that the Fuegians decrease in number; therefore we must 
suppose that they enjoy a sufficient share of happiness, of 
whatever kind it may be, to render life worth having. Nature 
by making habit omnipotent, and its effects hereditary, has 
fitted the Fuegian to the climate and the productions of his 
miserable country. 
After having been detained six days in Wigwam Cove by 
very bad weather, we put to sea on the 30th of December. 
Captain Fitz Roy wished to get westward to land York and 
Fuegia in their own country. When at sea we had a constant 
succession of gales, and the current was against us : we drifted 
to 57 ° 2 3 / south. On the 1 ith of January 1833, by carrying 
a press of sail, we fetched within a few miles of the great rugged 
mountain of York Minster (so called by Captain Cook, and the 
origin of the name of the elder Fuegian), when a violent squall 
