how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches. So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. These wait all upon thee; that thou mayest give them their meat in due season. That thou givest them they gather thou openest thine hand, they are filled with good."

The inhabitants of the Fuegian Archipelago have sometimes been called Pesherais, from a word which some of them are constantly using. In the classification of the Human Families they have been named "the Ichthyophagi," or Fish-eaters of Tierra del Fuego.* Of course they are South American Indians, and they belong to the Araucanian division of the great Andian race. They are not only the nearest neighbours, but are undoubtedly of the closest kindred, to the Patagonian inhabitants of the adjacent continent; but they are intellectually and physically inferior to these stately specimens of mankind. Many of them have trunks proportionate to a six-foot stature; but their indolent squatting existence has dwarfed their extremities. Their colour is something between dark copper and brown. Captain FitzRoy compares it to "very old mahogany." † owing to the wood-smoke with which they are

But

* See Prichard's Natural History of Man, Second Edition, p. 450; and Prichard's History of Mankind, vol. v.

+ Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, vol. ii. p. 137.

saturated, the oil and blubber with which they are smeared, and the earths, white, red, and black, with which they are painted, it is difficult to ascertain exactly a Fuegian complexion. Like their bodies, their heads are large. These heads are oblate spheroids, with long jet hair hanging straight down on either side, but cropped away over the brow. The forehead is very low, but, like the face, it is broad. The black eyes are oval, drawn towards the temples, and have usually an expression of simple good-humour. The nose is not handsome: flat and thick, with large nostrils, it is concave in profile; and it is well supported by a mouth of great width, which closes in a straight line, and opens in an ample ellipse. The beaux of the antipodes do not fancy long beards, and what little hair shews itself on the chin or the eye-brows is usually extracted with tweezers made of two mussel-shells. As already mentioned, from constantly crouching in their huts and canoes, their legs are crooked and stunted; but still, they are by no means deficient in agility, and, in trials of strength, some of them were more than a match for an English sailor.*

Their clothing is scanty. dential arrangement which frozen seas with oil, the

By the same provicoats the whale in Fuegian is fortified

*For a minute description see a paper by Mr Wilson in the appendix to the 2d vol. of the "Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle." Portraits of Fuegians may be seen there, and in the folio atlas of plates to Cook's Last Voyage.

against his inclement sky by an abundant development of the adipose tissue; and though his seaotter or guanaco cloak is sometimes scanty, in admiring his hardihood, we must not forget that inside his skin he wears a thick under-clothing of non-conducting fat. Hence these islanders sometimes exhibit feats, the recital of which is enough to make us shiver. In the coldest mid-winter they may be seen diving for sea-eggs; and it was on a dark night, when the thermometer was at 28°, that some of them swam from the shore, and, from its moorings alongside, cut away the ship's boat of the Adelaide.

Nothing can be more wretched than their habitations. When a family lands from its canoe, the first care of the women, who are the only workers, is to build a house. For this purpose they cut down twenty or thirty trees, and arranging them in a circle, with the narrow ends resting on each other, like the sheaves in a shock of corn, they tie them together at the top, putting a little thatch or a few skins on the windward side, and leaving one entrance toward the sea and another toward the forest. There they kindle a fire, and there they huddle together night and day in stormy weather; and there they tarry till they have devoured all the food of the district, and it is time to seek another settlement.

They are not without a taste for ornament, nor are they entirely devoid of ingenuity. They

usually adorn their hair with a fillet of sinewy threads, elaborately and not inelegantly plaited; and on great occasions this fillet is pranked out with birds' feathers or bits of red cloth obtained from the sailors. They are fond of bracelets and necklaces. These they make from shells or the small bones of animals; or, failing beads and buttons, from little chips of crockery. When shells are used, they are drilled so neatly that the process must require both skill and care. The Spanish voyager Cordova speaks with admiration of a sort of jar or basket which he found amongst them, entirely formed of bark, and with the bottom so accurately sewed in, that it could carry water without leaking.* But, crazy as they are, their canoes are perhaps a still more wonderful specimen of needle-work. These also are composed of the bark of trees. The main bulk may be the bark of one single beech; but in order to complete it, a great many patches and a large amount of stitching are requisite. With grass for oakum, and clay for pitch, and with thongs instead of nails, the builder soon finishes a boat which, after its own fashion, is a triumph of naval architecture. long as it can carry paddlers as well as pumpers, it is considered sea-worthy; but as soon as it requires all hands to bail it, they think it time to abandon it, and a new one is built or stolen.

As

Although their comforts are so few, they are

* Cordova's Voyage to the Straits of Magellan.

well provided with offensive weapons. They have spears, and bows and arrows, and slings which they use with such precision as nearly to equal in effect an ordinary musket. Besides, many of them are furnished with the Patagonian bolas-a chainshot of formidable character. It consists of two round stones, covered with leather, and fastened to the two ends of a string about eight feet long. One stone is held in the hand whilst the other is whirled round the head till it has acquired sufficient velocity; and then both are hurled at the object. Should it strike the legs of an ostrich or guanaco, it instantly twists tightly around them and holds the creature in fetters till the huntsman comes up.

Yet, with all his weapons, it is a scanty subsistence which the Fuegian secures. The sea around him is teeming with food, but he has neither net nor angle; and it is only when he is lucky enough to spear a rock-salmon, or when he can get a sufficiency of a little simpleton fish which allows itself to be spirited out of the water by a baited but hookless line, that this Ichthyophagous Indian deserves his name. But if he is not a clever fisherman, he is a cunning bird-catcher. In his fowling excursions he is attended by a knowing little dog, half fox, half terrier; and, if it is a moonlit night, the sportsman may be descried on the beach near the roosts of the sea-birds, and waiting till his fourfooted accomplice returns with a dead duck in his jaws, which he instantly deposits at his master's

H