Somewhat belatedly… the fourth in our series of articles about missionary encounters with the Yaghan. If you haven’t been following along, check out the first, second, and third articles. The final instalment will follow shortly! The days being short during the southern winter, by the time we reached Wulaia the sun was already low in the sky. We had planned to spend some time exploring the Yaghan ‘hut circles’, but as we approached the bay, wending our way amongst the…
We interrupt our series of articles about the Yaghan indians of Tierra del Fuego to bring you another tale about our day to day life down here. How do you picture the southernmost limit of mankind’s colonisation of this planet? Do you see snow and ice stacked up around little wooden houses? A back-drop of rugged mountains…? Wild winds whisking around the famous Cape and hurtling up through the channels…? The images that these words throw up are probably fairly…
This is the third article in our series about Western encounters with the Yaghan natives of Tierra del Fuego. If you haven’t been following along, check out the first and second articles. It being only a week or two before the solstice, and the shortest day of the year in the south, the time available to us for sailing in the Beagle Canal was limited. Not that it’s impossible to travel at night, but one certainly can’t make harbour under…
In the first part of this saga we were introduced to the Yaghan, the hunter-gatherer people who dwelt on the shores of Tierra del Fuego. We now follow the story of how they came to be considered not just as objects of pity but as souls to be saved; and, in this matter, no one played a more important role than Robert FitzRoy. With only 24 years to his back, Robert FitzRoy was an unlikely candidate for command of a…
In June, in the middle of the southern winter, we set out from Puerto Williams with the object of passing through the Murray Strait and into Ponsonby Sound. This body of water lies between the Beagle Channel and the Cape Horn archipelago, and it would be a splendid cruising ground but for the fact that the Chilean navy has declared the whole area off-limits to all foreign vessels. To get round this difficulty we arranged to make the voyage with…
A couple of days ago we received some terribly sad and shocking news: Our dear friend, Carly Hill, has been lost overboard from the catamaran Oryx. Oryx had recently crossed the Atlantic from Brazil to spend some time in Carly’s South African homeland. During this month-long adventure Carly’s family and friends were quite worried for her safety – and with some justification, I may say, for the passage across the southern end of the South Atlantic is no sunshine cruise.…
This is the fourth and final article in our series about the traditional boats we saw in our time in Brazil. See also the previous articles: Dug-Out Canoes on the Bahia, Modern Canoe Building in Brazil, and Bluewater Rafting (traditional Brazilian ‘Jangadas’). The thing about dug-outs is that every one is unique. They aren’t built to a plan, they’re built according to the size of the tree. Still, each builder does set out with an image in his mind of…
What would make you really happy? Maybe you’re already as happy as could be, but it seems that a lot of people aren’t. A lot of people have their eyes set on attaining or achieving a certain something which will make their life complete. When we’re small that something might be a shiny new bicycle, but as we grow up we get more ambitious: we want a house, we want a car, we want a holiday in the sun… In…
They say that the first man to cross the river probably used a log, but I’m not so sure. If you’ve ever tried stepping onto a floating log then you’ll know that it’s not easy; as soon as you put a foot aboard, it starts to spin around. Myself, I think that the first palaeolithic sailor used half a dozen logs which he lashed tightly together – and in northern Brazil there are people who still put to sea aboard…
In our last article we introduced you to the dug-out canoes of Bahia. In chapter two of the story of Brazil’s traditional boats we show you how the natives have adapted their boat building methods to cope with modern legislation. In the Bahia de Todos os Santos and in neighbouring Camamu the dug-out canoes are low and narrow – and slow. Even the bigger ones, which accommodate six fishermen, are relatively low and very slow. They are evidently very heavy.…
