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

GUANACOES FIRE. 187 Fuegians and their dogs hem him in on every side, and quickly make him their prey. Jemmy Button's division of the Tekeenica, living westward of Murray Narrow, never obtain guanacoes; but the other division, who live eastward of that small passage, often kill them in winter ; and at other times of the year they sometimes get them by lying in wait, and shooting them with arrows, or by getting into a tree near their track, and spearing them as they pass beneath the branches. An arrow was shewn to Low, which was marked with blood two-thirds of its length in wounding a guanaco, afterwards caught by dogs. Low held out his jacket, making signs that the arrow would not penetrate it upon which the native pointed to his eye. Some of the families of this eastern division of the Tekeenica have no canoes, living entirely at a distance from the shore, and subsisting upon berries, birch-fungus, guanacoes, and birds. The bows and arrows of those men are longer and better, and they have some very fine dogs, which are trained to search for and bring home food. These dogs often surprise the larger birds, while feeding on the ground, as well as when they are at roost, so quietly do they steal upon their prey. Byron men- tions that the Chonos Indians send their dogs away to fish, and that they assist their owners in fishing, by swimming about, and driving the fish into a corner. This I have not witnessed or heard of among the Fuegians ; but their dogs assist in a similar manner when in pursuit of an otter, by swimming and diving after it with the utmost eagerness. Fire, that essential necessary to man in every state and every climate, is always kept alive by these savages wherever they go, either in their canoes, in their wigwams, or even in their hand, by a piece of burning wood ; bvit they are at no loss to rekindle it, shovdd any accident happen. With two stones (usually iron pyrites) they procure a spark, which received among tinder, and then whisked round in the air, soon kindles into a flame. The tinder used is the inner down of birds, well dried; very fine dry moss; or a dry kind of fungus found on the under side of half-rotten trees. Where the pyrites is