127. FUEGIAN TRADERS.
These people plainly showed that they had a fair notion of barter. Mr. Darwin gave one man a large nail (a most valuable present) without making any signs for a return; but he immediately picked out two fish, and handed them up on the point of his spear. Here at least we see signs of a mental activity favorably contrasting with the stolid indifference of the Fuegians seen by Forster at Christmas Harbor; and Mr. Darwin is even of opinion that in general these people rise above the Australians in mental power, although their actual acquirements may be less.
The reason why the Fuegians are so little advanced in the arts of life, are partly to be sought for in the nature of the land, and partly in their political state. The perfect equality among the individuals in each tribe must retard their civilization; and until some chief shall arise with power sufficient to secure any acquired advantage, such as the domesticated animals, it seems scarcely possible that their condition can improve. But the chief causes of their wretchedness are doubtless the barrenness of their country and their constant forced migrations.
With the exception of the eastern part, the habitable land is reduced to the stones on the beach. In search of food they are compelled to wander from spot to spot; and so steep is the coast that they can only move about in their canoes. Whenever it is low water, winter or summer, night or day, they must rise to pick limpets from the rock; and the women either dive to collect sea-eggs, or sit patiently in their boats, 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 discovered, it is a feast; and such miserable food is assisted by a few tasteless berries, chiefly of a dwarf arbutus, or by a globular bright yellow fungus (Cyttaria Darwini), which grows in vast numbers on the beech-trees. When young, it is elastic, with a smooth surface; but, when mature, it shrinks, becomes tougher, and has its entire surface deeply pitted or honey-combed. In this mature state it is collected in large quantities by the women and children, and is eaten uncooked. It has a mucilaginous, slightly sweet taste, with a faint smell like that of a mushroom.
The necessity of protecting themselves against the extremity of cold, and of obtaining their food from the sea, or by the chase of the reindeer or the white bear, forces the Esquimaux to exert all their faculties, and thus they have raised themselves considerably higher in the scale of civilization than the Fuegians, whose mode of life requires far less exertion of the mind. To knock a limpet from the rock or to collect a fungus does not even call cunning into exercise. Living chiefly upon shell-fish, they are obliged constantly to change their abode, and thus they hardly bestow any thought on their dwellings, which are more like the dens of wild beasts than the habitations of human beings. The Fuegian wigwam consists of a few branches stuck in the ground, and very imperfectly thatched on one side with a few tufts of grass and rushes. The whole can not be the work of an hour, and it is only used for a few days. At intervals, however, the inhabitants of these wretched huts return to the same spot, as is evident from the piles of old shells, often amounting to several tons in weight. These heaps can be distinguished at a distance by the bright green color of certain plants, such as the wild celery and scurvy grass, which invariably grow on them.
The only articles in the manufacture of which the Fuegians show some signs of ability are a few ornaments and their weapons, which again are far inferior to those of the Esquimaux. Their bows are small and badly shaped, their arrows, which are between two and three feet long, feathered at one end and blunted at the other. The points are only attached when the arrow is about to be used, and for this purpose the archer carries them about with him in a leathern pouch. The shaft of their larger spears is about ten feet long, and equally thick at both ends. At one of the extremities is a fissure, into which a pointed bone with a barbed hook is inserted and tightly bound with a thread. With this weapon they most probably attack the seals; they also use it to detach the shell-fish from the rocks below the surface of the water. A second spear, longer and lighter than the first, with a barbed point, serves most likely as a weapon of war; and a third one, much shorter and comparatively thin, may perhaps be destined for the birds. The females know how to make pretty necklaces of colored shells and baskets of grass stalks. Here, as with all other races of mankind, we find the germs of improvement, which only require for their development the external impulse of more favorable circumstances.
128. A FUEGIAN AND HIS FOOD.
If it be asked whether they feel themselves as miserable as their wretched appearance would lead us to believe them, it must be replied that most travellers describe them as a cheerful, good-humored, contented people; and as Mr. Darwin finely remarks, “Nature, by making habit omnipotent and its effects hereditary, has fitted the Fuegian to the climate and the productions of his country.”