The polar and tropical worlds - a description of man and nature in the polar and equatorial regions of the globe (1874) (14777606812)

Identifier: polartropicalwor00hartuoft (find matches)

Title: The polar and tropical worlds : a description of man and nature in the polar and equatorial regions of the globe

Year: 1874 (1870s)

Authors: Hartwig, G. (Georg), 1813-1880 Guernsey, Alfred Hudson, 1824-1902

Subjects: Arctic peoples Natural history Antarctica Arctic regions Tropics

Publisher: Guelph, Ont. : J.W. Lyon

Contributing Library: Gerstein - University of Toronto

Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

Text Appearing Before Image:

lity are a few ornaments and their Aveapons, which again are farinferior to those of the Esquimaux. Their bows are small and badly shaped,their airows, which are between two and three feet long,feathered at one end.and blunted at the other. The jtoints are only attached when the arrow isabout to be used, and for this purpose the archer carries them about with himin a leathern pouch. The shaft of their larger spears is about ten feet long. THE FUEGIANS. 489 and equally thick at both ends. At one of the extremities is a fissure, into wliicha pointed bone with a barbed hook is inserted and tightly bound with a thread.With this weapon they most probably attack the seals; they also use it to de-tach the shell-fish from the rocks below the surface of the Avater. A secondspear, longer and lighter than the first, with a barbed point, serves most likelyas a weapon of war; and a tliird one, much shorter and comparatively thin,raav perhaps be destined for the birds. Tiie females know how to make

Text Appearing After Image:

A FUEGIAN AND HIS FOOD. pretty necklaces of colored shells and baskets of grass stalks. Here, as withall other races of mankind, we find the germs of improvement, which onlyrequire for their development the external impulse of more favorable circum-stances. If it be asked Avhether they feel themselves as miserable as their wretchedappearance would lend us to believe them, it must be replied that most travel-lers describe them as a cheerful, good-humored, contented people; and as Mr,Darwin finely remarks, Nature, by making habit omnipotent and its effects 430 THE POLAR WORLD. Iicrctlitarv, has fitted the Fuegian to tlie dimate and the productions of hiscountry. The number of these savages is no doubt very small, as seldom more thanthirty or forty individuals arc seen together. The interior of the mountainousislands, which is as little known as the interior of Spitzbergen, is no doubt com-))letely uninhabited ; as the coasts alone, with the excei)tion of the eastern andmore level part o

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1874

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