women catch.

Low as they are in the scale of humanity, from the standpoint of Western
civilization, the Fuegians, or Canoe Indians, as they are generally
called, because they live so much on the water, and have no fixed abodes
on shore, sink much lower. They are cannibals, and, according to an old
writer, "magpies in chatter, baboons in countenance, and imps in
treachery." Whenever it is seen that a ship is in distress, or that a
shipwrecked crew have been cast ashore, signal fires blaze on every
prominent point, to convey the good news to the whole island population,
and immediately the natives assemble, like the clans at Roderick Dhu's
bidding, in Scott's "Lady of the Lake." But if all goes well, a vessel
may pass through Magellan's Straits without discerning any sign of human
life, the savages and their canoes lying hidden beneath the leafy screen
of overhanging boughs. Those who frequent the Eastern part of "Fireland"
(Tierra del Fuego) are clothed, in so far as they cover their nakedness
at all, in a deerskin mantle descending to the waist; those at the
Western end wear cloaks made from the skin of the sea otter. But most of
them are quite naked. Their food is of the scantiest description,
consisting almost wholly of shell-fish, sea-eggs, and fish generally,
which they train their dogs to assist them in catching. These dogs are
sent into the water at the mouth of a narrow creek or a small bay, where
they bark and flounder about until the fish are frightened into the
shallows.

Lady Brassey had an opportunity of seeing some Fuegians closely. When
the _Sunbeam_ was in English Reach, a canoe suddenly appeared on her
port bow, and as she seemed making direct for the yacht, Sir Thomas
ordered the engines to be slowed. Thereupon her occupants plied their
paddles more furiously than before, shouting and gesticulating
violently, one man waving a skin round his head with an energy of action
that threatened to capsize his frail craft--frail, in truth, for it was
made only of rough planks rudely fastened together with the sinews of
animals. A rope was thrown to them, and they came alongside, shouting
"Tabaco, galleta" (biscuit), a supply of which they received, in
exchange for the skin they had been waving; "whereupon the two men
stripped themselves of the skin mantles they were wearing, made of eight
or ten sea-otter skins, sewed together with finer sinews than those used
for the boat, and handed them up, clamouring for