The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1888-02-02
shore, towing the three boats behind

they were keeping him for torture
> and preferring immediate death to +;
deferred but more horrible fate, at
tempted to jump into the sea, or dasf
out his brains against the sides of thu
canoe; but they carefully prevented
him from doing himself any harm
Arrived at the shore, they retired te
their huts, leaving him still bouno
hand and foot upon the beach.
This was late in the afternoon, ano
all that night he lay there helpless
expecting every moment to be carried
to the fire or some other torture. But
they went about their business, gath.
ering CLANS and mussels and eating
them raw, collecting fuel and
heaping up the fires, and never
touched their prisoner at all
only they kept looking towards him
and crowds of little half-naked hid
eous children stood few yards off and
gazed at him in awe, and lean dogs
came and snarled and shifted at him
suspicously.
The tribe appeared to consist Of one
or two hundred, and there were sew
eral rude huts formed Of trees cut
down and stuck close to one another
in the ground, while their branches
and foliage were tied together and
formed an inefficient roof.
Fuegans appear to be insensible to
cold, for though the climate is as cold
or even colder than the extreme north
of Scotland, they do not attempt to
make comfortable huts for themselves,
and they wear nothing but the light
clothing which 1 have described. At
night, however, most of them slept by
the fires, like dogs on winters night.
All that night long Thomas Tho
rold lay bound upon the beach, trem-
bling with cold and terror, and pray
ing, "Lord, now let me die!''
In the early morning he felt that
his hour had come, for two or three
of the Fuegans came towards him,
and one of them had knife in his
hand. But when they had cut the
fibre ropes that bound him they left
him alone again, standing on the
beach, free to do what he liked.
1t was useless to think Of flight, for
their eyes were always upon him, and
besides, one man could have done
nothing with boat in the sea. outside
the bay. So after while he obeyed
the cravings of nature, and collected
mussels and CLANS on the shore, as he
had seen the natives do; and on this
cold food he made wretched break
fast.
Thus he spent all that day and all
the next thirty seven days. for he
kept careful count Of the time. He
ate only the miserable shellfsh that
he found on the beach, drank water
from torrent that flowed down the
mountain-side, and slept by one Of
the fires, which he boldly approached
the first night after they unbound
him, for he had experienced the cald
of one wintry night, and that was
enough.
They were neither kind nor unkind
to him, but took no notice of him
whatever; they never attempted to
speak to him, even by signs, except
on one occasion when he wandered
too far from them, and one of them
ran after him and made signs to him
to go back.
During the ieaden-footed days he
necessarily observed how the natives
passed their time, but he did so with
out the slightest interest, and was un-
able to relate many details about
them. Most of the work, such as
hewing wood and drawing water, was
done by the women; the men did very
little, but spent their time mostly in
lying about their huts. Sometimes a
few of them went off in their canoes
seal hunting, and always returned
with one or two seals; sometimes
they went hunting inland, and re-
turned with a guanaco-a SPECIES of
llama, then they all Immediately fell
upon it, tore it to pieces, and ate it
raw. If a dead seal was washed ashore,
they ate it in the same way, gorging
themselves on the putrid blubber and
flesh,
After these disgusting feeds they
lay on the ground for hours in tor
por, and Thorold could easily have
stabbed them as they lay asleep, but
that some of the weaker ones, having
beea unable to secure much of the
food, were awake and ready to cast
their spears at him. Moreover, if he
had killed them all, he would have
been no better off.
All these weeks he was in a horri-
! hle state OF suspense as to why he was
being kept alive and what torture was
preparing for him, so much so that he
was unable to sleep for terror, until
forced into unconsciousness by ia
tigue.
But on the thirty-eighth day an
event occurred which, although in it
self gruesome and terrifying, put into
his heart hope that he might some
day return to the outer world again,
and gave him clue as to what was
his captors' only conceivable object in