Molina, From A Similarity In Habits, Thought That This
Was The Same With His "Culpeu;" [7] But I Have Seen Both,
And They Are Quite Distinct.
These wolves are well known
from Byron's account of their tameness and curiosity, which
the sailors, who ran into the water to avoid them, mistook
for fierceness.
To this day their manners remain the same.
They have been observed to enter a tent, and actually pull
some meat from beneath the head of a sleeping seaman. The
Gauchos also have frequently in the evening killed them,
by holding out a piece of meat in one hand, and in the other
a knife ready to stick them. As far as I am aware, there
is no other instance in any part of the world, of so small
a mass of broken land, distant from a continent, possessing
so large an aboriginal quadruped peculiar to itself. Their
numbers have rapidly decreased; they are already banished
from that half of the island which lies to the eastward of
the neck of land between St. Salvador Bay and Berkeley
Sound. Within a very few years after these islands shall
have become regularly settled, in all probability this for
will be classed with the dodo, as an animal which has perished
from the face of the earth.
At night (17th) we slept on the neck of land at the head
of Choiseul Sound, which forms the south-west peninsula.
The valley was pretty well sheltered from the cold wind,
but there was very little brushwood for fuel. The Gauchos,
however, soon found what, to my great surprise, made nearly
as hot a fire as coals; this was the skeleton of a bullock
lately killed, from which the flesh had been picked by the
carrion-hawks. They told me that in winter they often killed a
beast, cleaned the flesh from the bones with their knives,
and then with these same bones roasted the meat for their
suppers.
18th. - It rained during nearly the whole day. At night
we managed, however, with our saddle-cloths to keep ourselves
pretty well dry and warm; but the ground on which
we slept was on each occasion nearly in the state of a bog,
and there was not a dry spot to sit down on after our day's
ride. I have in another part stated how singular it is that
there should be absolutely no trees on these islands, although
Tierra del Fuego is covered by one large forest. The
largest bush in the island (belonging to the family of
Compositae) is scarcely so tall as our gorse. The best fuel is
afforded by a green little bush about the size of common
heath, which has the useful property of burning while fresh
and green. It was very surprising to see the Gauchos, in
the midst of rain and everything soaking wet, with nothing
more than a tinder-box and a piece of rag, immediately make
a fire. They sought beneath the tufts of grass and bushel
for a few dry twigs, and these they rubbed into fibres; then
surrounding them with coarser twigs, something like a bird's
nest, they put the rag with its spark of fire in the middle
and covered it up.
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