The
biggest of them, a stout fine-looking woman, had a terrible gash in
her leg, quite recently inflicted, and the youngest was not more than
eight years old. They appeared cheerful and happy, but we were told
that they are not likely to live long. After the free life and the
exposure to which they have been accustomed, civilisation--in the
shape of clothing and hot houses--almost always kills them. Their
lungs become diseased, and they die miserably. Their skin is slightly
copper-coloured, their complexions high-coloured, their hair thick and
black; and, though certainly not handsome, they are by no means so
repulsive as I had expected from the descriptions of Cook, Dampier,
Darwin, and other more recent travellers.
[Illustration: Fuegian Weapons.]
_Saturday, October 7th_.--My birthday. Tom gave me a beautiful
guanaco-skin robe, and the children presented me with two ostrich
rugs. The guanaco is a kind of large deer, and it is said that the
robes made from its skin are the warmest in the world. People here
assure me that, with the hair turned inside, these robes have afforded
them sufficient protection to enable them to sleep in comfort in the
open air, exposed to snow, frost, and rain. They are made from the
skin of the young fawns, killed before they are thirteen days old, or,
better still, from the skins of those which have never had an
independent existence.
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