I Have Often Wondered That These People Do Not Clothe
Themselves Better, Since Nature Has Certainly Provided Materials.
They
might line their seal-skin cloaks with the skins and feathers of aquatic
birds; they might make their
Cloaks larger, and employ the same skins for
other parts of clothing, for I cannot suppose they are scarce with them.
They were ready enough to part with those they had to our people, which
they hardly would have done, had they not known where to have got more. In
short, of all the nations I have seen, the Pecheras are the most wretched.
They are doomed to live in one of the most inhospitable climates in the
world, without having sagacity enough to provide themselves with such
conveniences as may render life in some measure more comfortable.
Barren as this country is, it abounds with a variety of unknown plants, and
gave sufficient employment to Mr Forster and his party. The tree, which
produceth the winter's bark; is found here in the woods, as is the holy-
leaved barberry; and some other sorts, which I know not, but I believe are
common in the straits of Magalhaens. We found plenty of a berry, which we
called the cranberry, because they are nearly of the same colour, size, and
shape. It grows on a bushy plant, has a bitterish taste, rather insipid;
but may he eaten either raw or in tarts, and is used as food by the
natives.[4]
[1] "We found many little clefts, which cannot properly be called
vallies, where a few shrubs of different species sprang up in a thin
layer of swampy soil, being defended against the violence of storms,
and exposed to the genial influence of reverberated sun-beams. The
rock, of which the whole island consisted, is a coarse granite,
composed of feld-spath, quartz, and black mica or glimmer. This rock
is in most places entirely naked, without the smallest vegetable
particle; but wherever the rains, or melted snows, have washed
together some little rubbish, and other particles in decay, it is
covered with a coating of minute plants, in growth like mosses, which,
forming a kind of turf, about an inch or more in thickness, very
easily slip away under the foot, having no firm hold on the rock. In
sheltered places a few other plants thrive among these mossy species,
and these at last form a sufficient quantity of soil for the nutriment
of shrubs. Here we found the species which affords what has been
called Winter's Bark; but in this unfriendly situation it was only a
shrub about ten feet high, crooked and shapeless. Barren as these
rocks appeared, yet almost every plant which we gathered on them was
new to us, and some species were remarkable for the beauty of their
flowers, or their smell." - G.F.
[2] Mr G.F. has given a pretty minute description of the country
around this sound, and its annual and vegetable productions; but for a
reason afterwards stated by Captain Cook, there seems little
inducement to copy from it.
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