Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/66

 sun set bright and clear at fifteen minutes past ten, everything about looked dark, dreary, and cheerless. It was bitterly cold, — a cold which, at this extremity of the  earth, seemed almost to freeze the words spoken before  they could reach the ear. As we worked our passage through the field and drift ice, huge floes, and lofty icebergs, the wild sea-birds, which were very plenty, and the inhabitants of the briny deep flocked about us and viewed  us with their small, round eyes in wonder and astonishment. After much suffering and many narrow escapes, we returned to Orange Harbor, Terra del Fuego. I shall give a fuller account of this frozen region in my description of our second Antarctic cruise, which we made  from New Holland in the year 1840. We had no sooner come to anchor than we were visited by the natives. They are great mimics and are very fond of music. Our fifer played for them "My Bonny Lad," "Sweet Home,"  and "The Girl I Left Behind Me." They did not understand these songs, but when he struck up "The Bonnets of Blue" they were all immediately in motion, keeping time to the music. They were entirely naked, except the small piece of sealskin which they wore over  the weather shoulder. The only word they spoke was "Yammurscunar." They appeared to be very fond of their children. Nothing would induce the women to come on board. They sat in their canoes with their feet under them, tending the fire which may always be seen  in the bottom of the canoes on a pile of stones and ashes,  surrounded by water. How they manage to make a fire, I cannot imagine, unless it is by rubbing two dry sticks  together. Drake tells us that they live in and paddle