The Kayan Dyaks do not bury their dead, but place the body in a very stout coffin made of a hollowed tree, and elevate it on two stout carved posts, with woodwork projecting from each corner, like the roofs of Siamese houses.
CHAPTER CXX.
TIERRA DEL FUEGO.
APPEARANCE—ARCHITECTURE—MANUFACTURES.
POSITION OF THE COUNTRY AND SIGNIFICATION OF THE NAME — CONFORMATION OF THE LAND AND ITS ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE LIFE — APPEARANCE OF THE FUEGIANS — ERRONEOUS IDEAS CONCERNING THEM — COLOR, COSTUME, AND MODE OF WEARING THE HAIR — INDIFFERENCE TO DRESS — PAINT AND ORNAMENTS — FUEGIAN ARCHITECTURE — THE POINTED AND ROUNDED HUTS — THE SPEAR AND ITS HEAD — BOWS AND ARROWS — STONE THROWING — WONDERFUL STRENGTH OF THE FUEGIANS — SKILL WITH THE SLING — STUDY OF PARTICULAR WEAPONS — FOOD OF THE FUEGIANS — ANGLING WITHOUT HOOKS — THE DOGS, FISHERS AND BIRD CATCHERS — THE DOG RESPECTED BY THE FUEGIANS — CANNIBALISM — THE TREE FUNGUS — CANOES — THE LARGE AND SMALL CANOES, AND THEIR USES — SHIFTING QUARTERS AND TRANSPORTING CANOES — COOKERY — GENERAL TEMPERAMENT OF THE FUEGIANS — JEMMY BUTTON — FUEGIAN GOVERNMENT.
At the extreme southern point of America is a large island, or rather a collection of islands separated by very narrow armlets of the sea. It is separated from the mainland by the strange tortuous Magellan’s Strait, which is in no place wide enough to permit a ship to be out of sight of land, and in some points is exceedingly narrow. As Magellan sailed through this channel by night, he saw that the southern shore was studded with innumerable fires, and he therefore called the country Tierra del Fuego, or Land of Fire. These fires were probably beacons lighted by the natives in order to warn each other of the approach of strangers, to whom the Fuegians have at times evinced the most bitter hostility, while at others they have been kind and hospitable in their way.
The country is a singularly unpromising one, and Tierra del Fuego on the south and the Esquimaux country on the north seem to be exactly the lands in which human beings could not live. Yet both are populated, and the natives of both extremities of this vast continent are fully impressed with the superiority of their country over all others.
Tierra del Fuego is, as its proximity to the South Pole infers, a miserably cold country, and even in the summer time the place is so cold that in comparison England would seem to be quite a tropical island. In consequence of this extreme cold neither animal nor vegetable life can be luxuriant. The forests are small, and the trees short, stumpy, and ceasing to exist at all at some fifteen hundred feet above the level of the sea. There is a sort of evergreen beech (Fagus betuloides).
There is only one redeeming point in the climate of Tierra del Fuego. The mosquito that haunts alike the hottest and coldest countries, and equally a terror in tropical and Arctic America, cannot live in Tierra del Fuego, the damp, as well as the cold, being fatal to it. Indeed, there are very few insects in this strange land, and reptiles are altogether absent.
Absence of vegetable life naturally results in absence of animal life, the herbivorous animals being starved out for want of their proper food, and the carnivora being equally unable to live, as finding no animals on which to feed. Man being omnivorous, has a slightly better chance of living, but even he could not multiply and fill the country when food is so limited, provided he were limited to the land, but, as he is master of the waters as well as of the earth, he can draw his living from the sea and rivers when the land refuses to supply him with food. Such is the case with the Fuegians, who are essentially people of the sea and its shore, and who draw nearly the whole of their subsistence from its waters, as we shall see in a future page.
Perhaps in consequence of the scantiness, the irregularity, and the quality of their food, the Fuegians are a very short race of men, often shorter than the average Bosjesman of Southern Africa, and even lower in the social scale. They ought not to be called dwarfs, as is too often the case, their bodies being tolerably proportioned, and their figures not stunted, but simply smaller than the average of Europeans, while the muscular development of the upper part of the body is really wonderful. As a rule, the average height of the Fuegian men is about five feet, and that of the women four feet six inches. In some parts of the islands there are natives of much larger size, but these are evidently immigrants from the adjacent country of Patagonia, where the stature is as much above the average of Europeans as that of the Fuegians is below it.
The color of the natives is a dark coppery brown, the reddish hue being only perceptible in spots where they happen accidentally to be clean. The limbs are generally slight, so that the knees and elbows seem to be disproportionately large, and their heads are covered with masses of black hair, that possesses no curl, and falls in long, wild tangled locks over their shoulders. The men are almost entirely beardless.