How Little Can
The Higher Powers Of The Mind Be Brought Into Play:
What is
there for imagination to picture, for reason to compare, or
judgment to decide upon?
To knock a limpet from the rock
does not require even cunning, that lowest power of the
mind. Their skill in some respects may be compared to the
instinct of animals; for it is not improved by experience:
the canoe, their most ingenious work, poor as it is, has
remained the same, as we know from Drake, for the last two
hundred and fifty years.
Whilst beholding these savages, one asks, whence have
they come? What could have tempted, or what change compelled
a tribe of men, to leave the fine regions of the north,
to travel down the Cordillera or backbone of America, to
invent and build canoes, which are not used by the tribes
of Chile, Peru, and Brazil, and then to enter on one of the
most inhospitable countries within the limits of the globe?
Although such reflections must at first seize on the mind, yet
we may feel sure that they are partly erroneous. There is
no reason to believe that the Fuegians decrease in number;
therefore we must suppose that they enjoy a sufficient share
of happiness, of whatever kind it may be, to render life
worth having. Nature by making habit omnipotent, and its
effects hereditary, has fitted the Fuegian to the climate and
the productions of his miserable country.
After having been detained six days in Wigwam Cove by
very bad weather, we put to sea on the 30th of December.
Captain Fitz Roy wished to get westward to land York and
Fuegia in their own country.
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