The canoe is a rough, primitive structure: several breadths of bark stitched together with sinews of the seal, and gathered up at the ends. Along each side a pole is lashed joining the gunwale-rail, while several stout pieces laid crosswise serve as beam timbers. In the bottom, amidships, is a mud hearth on which burns a fire, with sticks set up around it to dry. There are three compartments in the craft, separated from one another by the cross-pieces: in the forward one are various weapons—spears, clubs, and sling-stones—and fishing implements. The amidships section holds the fire-hearth, the men having place on the forward side of it; the women, who do the paddling, are seated farther aft; while in the stern division are stowed the boys, girls, and dogs.
Such is the picture taken in by the gig’s people at a glance, for they have neither time nor opportunity to examine it minutely, as the Fuegians keep up a continual shouting and gesticulating, their hoarse guttural voices mingled with the barking of the dogs making a very pandemonium of noise.
A sign from Seagriff, however, and a word or two spoken in their own tongue, brings about a lull and an understanding, and the traffic commences. Sea-otter and fox-skins are exchanged for such useless trifles as chance to be in the gig’s lockers, the savage hucksters not proving exorbitant in their demands. Two or three broken bottles, a couple of empty sardine-boxes, with some buttons and scraps of coloured cloth, buy up almost all their stock-in-trade, leaving them not only satisfied, but under the belief that they have outwitted the akifka-akinish (white men).
Still, they continue to solicit further traffic, offering not only their implements of the chase and fishing, but their weapons of war! The spears and slings Seagriff eagerly purchases, giving in exchange several effects of more value than any yet parted with, somewhat to the surprise of Captain Gancy. But, confident that the old sealer has a good and sufficient reason, the Captain says nothing, and lets him have his way.
The Fuegian women are no less solicitous than the men about the barter, and eagerly take a hand in it. Unlike their sisters of civilisation, they are willing to part with articles of personal adornment, even that most prized by them, the shell
necklace. (Note 2.) Ay, more, what may seem incredible, she with the child—her own baby—has taken a fancy to a red scarf of China crape worn by Leoline, and pointing first to it and then to the babe on her shoulder, she plucks the little one from its lashings and holds it up with a coaxing expression on her countenance, like a cheap-jack tempting a simpleton at a fair to purchase a pinchbeck watch.
“What does the woman want?” asks Mrs Gancy, greatly puzzled; all the rest sharing her wonder, save Seagriff, who answers, with a touch of anxiety in his voice, “She wants to barter off her babby, ma’am, for that ’ere scarf.”
“Oh!” exclaims Leoline, shocked, “surely you don’t mean that, Mr Chips.”
“Sure I do, Miss; neyther more nor less. Thet’s jest what the unnateral woman air up to. An’ she wouldn’t be the first as hez done the same. I’ve heerd afore uv a Feweegin woman bein’ willin’ to sell her chile for a purty piece o’ cloth.”