coast, however, the wigwams are rather better, for they are covered
with seal-skins. We were detained here several days by the bad
weather. The climate is certainly wretched: the summer solstice was
now passed, yet every day snow fell on the hills, and in the valleys
there was rain, accompanied by sleet. The thermometer generally stood
about 45 degs., but in the night fell to 38 or 40 degs. From the damp
and boisterous state of the atmosphere, not cheered by a gleam of
sunshine, one fancied the climate even worse than it really was.
While going one day on shore near Wollaston Island, we pulled alongside
a canoe with six Fuegians. These were the most abject and miserable
creatures I anywhere beheld. On the east coast the natives, as we have
seen, have guanaco cloaks, and on the west they possess seal-skins.
Amongst these central tribes the men generally have an otter-skin, or
some small scrap about as large as a pocket-handkerchief, which is
barely sufficient to cover their backs as low down as their loins. It
is laced across the breast by strings, and according as the wind blows,
it is shifted from side to side. But these Fuegians in the canoe were
quite naked, and even one full-grown woman was absolutely so. It was
raining heavily, and the fresh water, together with the spray, trickled
down her body. In another harbour not far distant, a woman, who was
suckling a recently-born child, came one day alongside the vessel, and
remained there out of mere curiosity, whilst the sleet fell and thawed
on her naked bosom, and on the skin of her naked baby! These poor
wretches were stunted in their growth, their hideous faces bedaubed
with white paint, their skins filthy and greasy, their hair entangled,
their voices discordant, and their gestures violent. Viewing such men,
one can hardly make one's self believe that they are fellow-creatures,
and inhabitants of the same world. It is a common subject of
conjecture what pleasure in life some of the lower animals can enjoy:
how much more reasonably the same question may be asked with respect to
these barbarians! At night, five or six human beings, naked and
scarcely protected from the wind and rain of this tempestuous climate,
sleep on the wet ground coiled up like animals. Whenever it is low
water, winter or summer, night or day, they must rise to pick
shell-fish from the rocks; and the women either dive to collect
sea-eggs, or sit patiently in their canoes, and with a baited hair-line
without any hook, jerk out little fish. If a seal is killed, or the
floating carcass of a putrid whale is discovered, it is a feast; and
such miserable food is assisted by a few tasteless berries and fungi.
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