have frequently in the evening killed them, by holding out a piece of
meat in one hand, and in the other a knife ready to stick them. As far
as I am aware, there is no other instance in any part of the world, of
so small a mass of broken land, distant from a continent, possessing so
large an aboriginal quadruped peculiar to itself. Their numbers have
rapidly decreased; they are already banished from that half of the
island which lies to the eastward of the neck of land between St.
Salvador Bay and Berkeley Sound. Within a very few years after these
islands shall have become regularly settled, in all probability this
for will be classed with the dodo, as an animal which has perished from
the face of the earth.
At night (17th) we slept on the neck of land at the head of Choiseul
Sound, which forms the south-west peninsula. The valley was pretty well
sheltered from the cold wind, but there was very little brushwood for
fuel. The Gauchos, however, soon found what, to my great surprise,
made nearly as hot a fire as coals; this was the skeleton of a bullock
lately killed, from which the flesh had been picked by the
carrion-hawks. They told me that in winter they often killed a beast,
cleaned the flesh from the bones with their knives, and then with these
same bones roasted the meat for their suppers.
18th.--It rained during nearly the whole day. At night we managed,
however, with our saddle-cloths to keep ourselves pretty well dry and
warm; but the ground on which we slept was on each occasion nearly in
the state of a bog, and there was not a dry spot to sit down on after
our day's ride. I have in another part stated how singular it is that
there should be absolutely no trees on these islands, although Tierra
del Fuego is covered by one large forest. The largest bush in the
island (belonging to the family of Compositae) is scarcely so tall as
our gorse. The best fuel is afforded by a green little bush about the
size of common heath, which has the useful property of burning while
fresh and green. It was very surprising to see the Gauchos, in the
midst of rain and everything soaking wet, with nothing more than a
tinder-box and a piece of rag, immediately make a fire. They sought
beneath the tufts of grass and bushel for a few dry twigs, and these
they rubbed into fibres; then surrounding them with coarser twigs,
something like a bird's nest, they put the rag with its spark of fire
in the middle and covered it up. The nest being then held up to the
wind, by degrees it smoked more and more, and at last burst out in
183