Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.2): between the years 1826 and 1836 : describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagles's circumnavigation of the globe

132 SOUTHERN ABORIGINES. or portion of a tribe. It may consist of about six hundred men and women, besides children. Beyond a range of high mountains to the southward of the Yacana, is the tribe formerly called Key-uhue, now probably the Tekeenica. These are the smallest, and apparently the most wretched of the Fuegians. They inhabit the shores and neigh- bourhood of the Beaffle Channel. The number of adults in this tribe may be about five hundred. (Note 1.) To the westward, between the western part of the Beagle Channel and the Strait of Magalhaens, is a tribe now called Alikhoolip (which may be the Poy-yus), whose numbers amount perhaps to four hundred. About the central parts of Magalhaens Strait is a small and very miserable horde, whose name I do not know. Their usual exclamation is ' Pecheray !'' ' Pecheray !' whence Bougainville and others called them the Pecherais. For want of a more correct term I shall here use the same word. The number of adults among them is about two hundred. Near Otway and Skyring waters is a tribe, or fraction of a tribe, whose name I could not learn ; for the present I shall call them ' HuemuF — because they have many skins of a kind of roebuck, which is said to be the animal described by Molina as the ' Huemur *. Their number may be one hundred, or thereabouts. I am inclined to think that these Huemul Indians are a branch of the Yacana people, whom Falkner describes as living on both sides of the Strait. On the western coast of Patagonia, between the Strait of Ma- galhaens and the Chonos Archipelago, there is now but one tribe, in which there are not above four hundred grown people. Each of the tribes here specified speaks a language differing from that of any other, though, as I believe, not radically dif- ferent from the aboriginal Chilian. Some words are common to two or more tribes ; as may be seen by reference to the frag- ment of a vocabulary in the Appendix ; and differences must increase because neighbouring tribes are seldom at peace. The numbers above stated are mere estimations. The diffi- * See Note 2, at the end of this chapter.