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CHAPTER VI.

Fuegia.

TH' eternal Monarch from on high
Cast on the sons of earth his eye,
If haply some he yet might see
True to their God, from error free.

He look'd; but ah! not one could find
To virtue's Heaven-taught rules inclined;
Each, led from wisdom's path astray,
Pursues the tenor of his way.

Psalm liii. 2, 3.—Merrick.

What renders it much more difficult to convey divine truths to the understandings of these Indians, is, that there seems to be no foundation in their minds to begin upon. Besides, their inconvenient situations, savage manners, and unhappy method of living, have been an unspeakable difficulty and discouragement to me in my work.David Brainerd.

THE outline of South America may be compared to a paper kite; and, like a kite, there is attached to its apex a jointed tail, of which Fuegia and the South Shetlands are the only fragments seen above water. In other words, the mighty wall of the Andes is broken through by the sea, and the inundated valley forms the Strait of Magellan ; and, after a feeble re-appearance in the Fuegian archipelago, the cordillera is lost in the ocean.

As seen on a school-room map, this Tierra del Fuego is a dim islet, deriving its chief importance from its famous headland, Cape Horn. On a nearer inspection, however, this nebulous patch resolves into a cluster of islands,-one very large, with a crowd of smaller attendants to the west and south; and, far from the mainland, stands the kerbstone of the New World,-Cape Horn with his surf-beaten pyramid.

Though only the fag-end of America—a mere caudal vertebra of the Andes-if we had it in

Europe, Tierra del Fuego would be a country of some consideration. Its second-rate islands are larger than the Isle of Wight or the Isle of Man, and the surface of its mainland is equal to the Lowlands of Scotland. Its climate, however, renders it one of the most dreary and inhospitable regions on the face of the globe. In a latitude corresponding to Edinburgh, the sky seldom clears, and the rainy squalls of the summer are the only relief from the sleet and snow of the winter. A calm sunshine is a great rarity. If we imagined the mountains of the Hebrides rising to a height of six or seven thousand feet, with glaciers coming down to the sea, and a warm tide constantly flowing at their base; and if, moreover, we could bring the north polar ice into as low a latitude as the Antarctic ice descends-our own Western Isles would be the counterpart of Fuegia.

The warm vapor of the ocean would then be perpetually condensing on the frost of the hills, and clouds and showers would blot out from Mull and Skye their occasional days of clear weather. Even then, however, our Western Isles would be halcyon nests compared with this stormy archipelago. Nothing save a rampart of mountains, a mile or two in height, extending from the Cape Verdes to Campbelton, damming up the winds, and forcing them to rush through a few funnels on the Sound of Jura, could give our Northern Hemisphere a fac-simile of a Fuegian williwaw. This ferocious wind is capable

of overturning almost any obstacle; and, like grass in a swathe, not only branches but whole trees will sometimes be found piled up at the mouth of a gully where its rough sickle has passed.

Notwithstanding its boisterous summers and its perpetual storms, the average temperature of Fuegia is as high as Quebec or Montreal; and perhaps we have in London days as cold as any which occur in Hoste or Navarin Islands. The range between the extremes of heat and cold is small, and this comparative equability, along with the abundant moisture, is favorable to certain forms of vegetable life. In most districts of Britain the Fuchsia is a conservatory plant; but in Devonshire and in the Isle of Bute it grows luxuriantly in the open air, and in winter wants no shelter. Fuegia is one of its native lands, and there, along with its equally delicate companion, Veronica decussata, it becomes a tree with a trunk half a foot in diameter. The potato is indigenous on the adjacent mainland, although we do not know that it has been found in these islands, where celery, a species of currant, the berry of an arbutus, and a fungus, are the only esculents. The characteristic vegetation is two sorts of beech-tree. One of these (Fagus betuloides) is an evergreen; the other (Fagus Antarctica) is deciduous. The latter species is more hardy, and can scale the mountainsides to a higher platform than its glossy-green companion; so that in winter a zone of leafless

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