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

OBSTRUCTION SOUND. 199 large dimensions, and various shapes : two were like inverted whale-boats, each of which might hold forty or fifty people and in the long ones (six feet high), Mr. Bynoe could walk upright. All of them were built of slight materials, such as branches of trees covered with long grass. Five or six large wigwams stood together in each place ; and near them canoes had evidently been built, for many trees had been felled and barked close by. The traces of fire were visible, which had been trained around the roots of the trees ; and many large pieces of bark were lying about, partly sewed together. Four good canoes were found in one place, one of the four being quite new : and there were many old or broken ones. They also saw on nearly every sandy point a neatly-constructed small wigwam, about two feet high, at the entrance of which was a platted rush noose, intended as a snare to catch swans pro- bably, which were numerous about the adjoining grounds, and generally roost on those sandy points. Many deer, like a kind of roebuck, were seen by Mr. Bynoe, but he did not succeed in shooting one. Horse tracks were seen near the upper part of Obstruction Sound ; showing that the eastern Patagonians occasionally visit this part of the western coast. Mr. Bynoe suggested the possibility of the natives of Skyring Water tra- velling overland, building canoes, and then going northward along the west coast ; but I do not myself think it so likely as that the Chonos Indians should select such a spot, abounding in food, to pass their winter in, or to stay at for a considerable time Avhile building canoes. Probably, when Mr. Bynoe was there (being summer-time) the tribe, whose winter quarters it had been, were dispersed along the sea-coast in search of seal, eggs, and young birds. In support of his idea Mr. By- noe says, " I only met one canoe, and that of the bark kind, in the Mesier Channel : whence could that one have come ? None of the bark canoes have been seen by us on the west coast, excepting in that instance, and in Obstruction Sound. The distance from Skyring Water to the head of Obstruction Sound is small, though sufficiently difficult to traverse to prevent transporting canoes, because of low prickly brushwood.