Land-shells must be exceedingly scarce. I met with representatives of only four species, of which one, a specimen of Helix, I found on the frond of a Hymenophyllum at Tom Bay. Two others of the same genus were taken from the rotten trunk of a tree in the same locality. At Port Henry, in the Trinidad Channel, and other parts in the neighbourhood, I collected several specimens of a species of Succinea which clings to dead leaves and decayed pieces of driftwood lying on the shore just above high-water mark. These four species of shells have since been described by Mr. Edgar Smith, of the British Museum, as new to science. In a fresh-water lake, where I made some casts of a light dredge, I obtained from the bottom of stinking mud several examples of a large Unio shell, and some small shells of the genus Chilinia. I afterwards found species of Unio in a stream issuing from the lake. North of the English Narrows many pond snails of the genus Chilinia were also found abundantly in the stream beds.
I have found only two species of fresh-water fish, Aplochiton zebra, and a small Galaxias; and they inhabit most of the upland lakes which are of any considerable extent. The former is a smooth-skinned fish, with the general shape and fin arrangement of a grayling, but with a dark scaleless skin. It averages half a pound in weight, ranging up to three-quarters; and although it rose like a trout, we could not succeed in making it take the artificial fly, but caught it readily with worm-bait. These fish were also met with in mountain lakes far removed from the sea, whither their ova were probably, in the first instance, conveyed by cormorants. On one occasion Sir George Nares caught a specimen of this fish in a brackish lagoon, which communicated with the sea at high tide, so that it may have been derived from a marine progenitor which possessed the power of adapting itself to a fresh-water existence.
In the course of our survey of Concepcion Strait, we stopped for six days, in the month of March, at Portland Bay, an anchorage on the east side of the strait, and nearly opposite to Tom Bay. On the forenoon of our third day, a party of natives pulled in from the westward, with their canoe well-provisioned with shell-fish, as if they were about making a long voyage. There were three men, four women, three children, and four dogs. They were provided with a good iron axe, bone-pointed spears, a boat-rope made of plaited rushes, and other rude implements. It was evident that this party had previously met with some friendly vessel, for they readily came on board, and poked about the ship. Two of us went on a visit to their camp on the following day, but were received very ungraciously by a villainous-looking old hag armed with a club, who deprecated any attempt at landing on our part. We could only examine the canoe, which we found to be twenty-two feet long, four feet in beam amidships, and in other respects of the usual construction. On the next day we pulled over again, but only to find the hut deserted, and the party gone. We inferred, from various circumstances connected with their disappearance, that they must have penetrated up the Bay to the eastward, where there are unexplored channels which are supposed to extend towards the base of the Cordillera.
On the next day (March 24), a strong westerly breeze, with occasional rain-squalls, induced most of us to remain on board, and we were not a little surprised when, about 10 a.m., a boat under sail was reported standing across the Strait towards our anchorage. On nearer approach it turned out to be a native canoe, with a large sealskin hoisted in the forepart of the boat, so as to form a sort of square sail. As the natives came alongside to beg for biscuit and tobacco, we found that the wretched-looking boat contained three men, five women, eleven children (mostly very young), and five dogs. They had shipped a good deal of water on the passage, as might be expected, and all the wretched creatures looked as wet as fishes; indeed, to say that they were wet to the skin would be simply a truism in the case of the Fuegians. We had not previously noticed so prolific a family, the proportion of children being usually one for each woman. I use the word "family," because each of these canoe parties appears to constitute a sort of complicated family. One young mother did not appear to be more than sixteen years of age. I now inclined to the opinion, which subsequent experience gave me no reason to alter, that the Channel Fuegians are a migratory tribe, passing the summer months about the outer islands, where at that time of the year they may get seals, and the eggs and young of sea-birds, and in the autumn migrating up some of the fiords of the mainland, when the deer, driven down the hills by the winter snows, would be within their reach. There is no doubt that deer (probably the Cervus chilensis) have been seen from time to time on this coast. A few years ago the officers of one of the German steamers of the "Kosmos" line, stopping at Puerto Bueno about mid-winter, captured three or four in the immediate vicinity of the anchorage. We ourselves never met with any, although we saw doubtful indications of their presence; but further south we obtained portions of a deer from a native canoe. I was led to form the above-mentioned idea from comparing the great number of deserted wigwams which we encountered in our wanderings about these channels, with the small number of natives actually seen. The huts alluded to, moreover, bore indications of having been in use not many months previously, when they were probably inhabited temporarily by parties of natives on their way to the outer coasts. Fitzroy would seem to have entertained the same belief with reference to tribes about Smyth's Channel, from the fact that a party of men from his ship, when surveying Obstruction Sound in the summer-time, discovered a large deserted encampment containing many huts and canoes, and showing signs of its being the site of a great periodical gathering of the clans.
FUEGIANS OFFERING THEIR CHILDREN FOR BARTER
CHAPTER III.
EXPLORATIONS IN THE TRINIDAD CHANNEL.
In prosecuting the survey of the Trinidad Channel, we anchored, for short periods each time, at a great many ports on its northern and southern shores; and in crossing and re-crossing the channel we ran lines of soundings which enabled us to ascertain roughly the general conformation of its bed. Across the seaward entrance of the channel, i.e., from Cape Gamboa on the north to Port Henry on the south, the soundings gave a mean depth of thirty fathoms, showing the existence of a sort of bar, while one mile inside of this the depth increased to two and three hundred fathoms. This was just as we expected; the bar across the entrance representing the terminal moraine of the huge glacier which originally gouged out the channel, and whose denuding action is abundantly recorded in the scorings, planings, and striations so palpable on all the hard rocks of these inhospitable shores.