"None can reply--all seems eternal now. The wilderness has a mysterious
tongue, Which teaches awful doubt." [11]
In the evening we sailed a few miles further up, and then pitched the
tents for the night. By the middle of the next day the yawl was
aground, and from the shoalness of the water could not proceed any
higher. The water being found partly fresh, Mr. Chaffers took the
dingey and went up two or three miles further, where she also grounded,
but in a fresh-water river. The water was muddy, and though the stream
was most insignificant in size, it would be difficult to account for
its origin, except from the melting snow on the Cordillera. At the
spot where we bivouacked, we were surrounded by bold cliffs and steep
pinnacles of porphyry. I do not think I ever saw a spot which appeared
more secluded from the rest of the world, than this rocky crevice in
the wide plain.
The second day after our return to the anchorage, a party of officers
and myself went to ransack an old Indian grave, which I had found on
the summit of a neighbouring hill. Two immense stones, each probably
weighing at least a couple of tons, had been placed in front of a ledge
of rock about six feet high. At the bottom of the grave on the hard
rock there was a layer of earth about a foot deep, which must have been
brought up from the plain below. Above it a pavement of flat stones
was placed, on which others were piled, so as to fill up the space
between the ledge and the two great blocks. To complete the grave, the
Indians had contrived to detach from the ledge a huge fragment, and to
throw it over the pile so as to rest on the two blocks. We undermined
the grave on both sides, but could not find any relics, or even bones.
The latter probably had decayed long since (in which case the grave
must have been of extreme antiquity), for I found in another place some
smaller heaps beneath which a very few crumbling fragments could yet be
distinguished as having belonged to a man. Falconer states, that where
an Indian dies he is buried, but that subsequently his bones are
carefully taken up and carried, let the distance be ever so great, to
be deposited near the sea-coast. This custom, I think, may be
accounted for by recollecting, that before the introduction of horses,
these Indians must have led nearly the same life as the Fuegians now
do, and therefore generally have resided in the neighbourhood of the
sea. The common prejudice of lying where one's ancestors have lain,
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