Alas! Jemmy Button is no longer Jemmy Button, but again the savage Orundelico, he too having gone back to barbarism. His dress, or rather the absence of it, his greasy and mud-bedaubed skin, his long unkempt hair, and the wild animal-like expression of his features—all attest his relapse into a condition of savagery, total and complete. Not a vestige of civilised man remains with him to show that he has ever been a mile from the Murray Narrow.
But stay, I am wronging him—twice wronging him. He has not entirely forgotten the foreign tongue taught him on board the Beagle and during a year’s residence in England; while something he remembers also—something better—the kindness there shown him and the gratitude due for it.
He is paying the debt now as best he can, and on this account Captain Gancy has consented to make a brief stop at the fishing-station. There are also two other distinct reasons for his doing so. Before proceeding farther, he wishes to obtain more information about the Yapoos, and he needs a fresh supply of provisions—that furnished by Eleparu having been neither abundant nor palatable.
Orundelico can do better for them, even to providing fresh meat—a thing they have not tasted for a long time. They are now in a region where roams the guanaco (Note 1); and the Tekeneekas are hunters as well as fishermen. A party has been sent inland to procure one or more of these animals, and the boat-voyagers are awaiting its return before continuing their interrupted voyage.
Meanwhile, the hospitality shown them by Jemmy Button is as generous as his limited means will allow. To make their time pass agreeably, he entertains them with accounts of many odd manners and customs, and also of such strange phenomena of nature as are peculiar to his country. The Tekeneekas, he assures them, are a peaceful people, never going to war when they can avoid it. Sometimes, however, they are forced into it by certain neighbouring tribes that make marauds upon them. The Ailikoleeps are enemies of theirs, but a wide belt of neutral territory between the two prevents frequent encounters. They more often have quarrels with the Yapoos living to the eastward, though these are tribally related to them. But their most dreaded foes are the Oensmen, whose country lies north of the channel, beyond the range of high mountains that borders it. The Oensmen he describes as giants, armed with a terrible weapon—the “bolas.” (Note 2.) But, being exclusively hunters, they have no canoes; and when on a raid to the southern side of the channel, they levy on the craft of the Yapoos, forcing the owners to ferry them across.
Orundelico’s own people can fight too, and bravely, according to his account; but only do so in defence of their homes and at the last extremity. They are not even possessed of warlike weapons—neither the deadly club nor the flint-bladed dagger—their spears, bows, and slings being used only as implements for fishing and the chase.
Besides the harmaur (guanaco), they hunt the hiappo (sea-otter) and the coypu, or South American beaver, (Note 3), which is also found in Tierra del Fuego. The chase of the otter takes place out in the open water, where the amphibious animal is surrounded by the well-trained dogs in a wide circle; they then close in upon it, diving whenever it goes under to prevent its escape through the enfilading ring.
Of the tekeneeka mode of fishing he treats them to an actual exhibition. No hooks are used, the bait, a lump of seal flesh, being simply attached to a hair-line. The fish, seizing it, is gently drawn to the surface, then dexterously caught by the left hand, and secured before it can clear its teeth from the tough fibrous bait. The rods used in this primitive style of angling are of the rudest kind—mere sticks, no longer than coach-whip shafts.
In hunting the harmaur, or, as they also call it, wanakaye (evidently a corruption of “guanaco”), one of their modes is to lie in wait for it on the limb of a tree which projects over the path taken by these animals, the habit of which is to follow one another in single file, and along old frequented tracks. Above these, among the branches, the Tekeneeka hunter constructs a sort of wattle staging or nest. Seating himself on this, he awaits the coming of the unsuspicious creature, and, when it is underneath, plunges his spear down between its ribs, the blade of the spear being a bone taken from some former victim of its own species.
Orundelico also shows them the Fuegian mode of fire-kindling, the first sparks being obtained from the cathow, or fire-stone, (Note 4), two pieces of which every Fuegian carries about him, as a habitual smoker does his flint and steel or box of matches. The inflammable material used by the natives is of three sorts: the soft down of certain birds, a moss of fine fibre, and a species of dry fungus found attached to the under side of half-rotten trees. The cathows, rasped against each other like flints, emit sparks which ignite the tinder, when the flame is produced in the way that the old sealer has employed since they have been in the country.