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Some of the sailor-folk talked of mirages that rose into the air of northern coasts and seas, but the wise ones put their fingers beside their noses and called to memory the Flying Dutchman, that wanderer of the seas whose captain, having sworn that he would round Cape Horn in spite of heaven and hell, has been beating to and fro along the bleak Fuegian coast and elsewhere for centuries, being allowed to land but once in seven years, when he can break the curse if he finds a girl who will love him.
In the intense, penetrating light of sunrise, the bedaubed and skin-clothed Argentine was the most unlovely object that ever captivated woman. Yet he satisfied the soul of this Fuegian maid, so what more was there to be said? Courtenay caught the happy little sigh, half laugh, half sob, with which Elsie announced her discovery of the idyl in the canoe.
If any present was designed for one canoe, and it fell near another, it was invariably given to the right owner. The Fuegian boy, whom Mr. Low had on board showed, by going into the most violent passion, that he quite understood the reproach of being called a liar, which in truth he was.
Presently, however, I suspected that it was an arrow of some sort, for just then one passing not far from me struck the mainmast, where it stuck fast, vibrating from the shock a Fuegian autograph. A savage was somewhere near, there could be no doubt about that.
The keen-scented Fuegian canines, with an instinctive antipathy to white people, immediately on setting paw upon land, rush up to the camp and surround it, ferociously barking and making a threatening show of teeth; and it is only by vigorously brandishing the boat-hook that they can be kept off.
Captain Gancy, quickly covering the canoes with his glass, makes out, what is yet undistinguishable by the naked eye of any other than a Fuegian, that there are two sorts of men in them, quite different in appearance; unlike in form, facial aspect, dress everything. Above all, are they dissimilar in size, some being of gigantic stature; the others alongside of them appearing like pigmies!
I feel that we talk like Freemasons together we of the Higher Brotherhood who have worshipped the sun, præsentiorem deum, in his own nearer temples. Let me begin by positing an extreme parallel. How obviously inadequate is the conception of life enjoyed by the ordinary Laplander or the most intelligent Fuegian!
Meanwhile, they do not remain idle, another resource engaging them a feat for which the Fuegian native has obtained a world-wide celebrity namely, diving for sea-eggs. A difficult, dangerous industry it is, and just on this account committed to the women, who alone engage in it.
We went to see three Fuegian females, who are living in a house belonging to the medical officer of the colony. They were picked up a short time since by a passing steamer from a canoe, in which they had evidently sought refuge from some kind of cruelty or oppression.
A succession of westerly winds, or rather continuation of them, has forced her too far on to the Fuegian coast, too near the Furies; and now tossed about on a billowy sea, with the breakers of the Milky Way in sight to leeward, no wonder that her crew are apprehensive for their safety. Still, perilous as their situation, they might not so much regard it were the Calypso sound and in sailing trim.
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