Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 2.djvu/285

1842

but which has this effect with the savage or but partially civilised subject. No one, knowing the barbarities practised by the inhuman Gauchoe, who mutilates his fellow creature for the gratification of revenge, can doubt of these atrocities being the fruits of a love of cattle-slaughtering, which he adopts as his profession from a blood-thirsty disposition. It is a law with him to kill: any opposition on the part of his victim to his fulfilling that law is an offence against himself; which he makes it a duty to punish: hence the wanton cruelty he practises on the poor cattle in the hunt, and hence the torturing of his prisoner or captive in war. I never afterwards passed the spot where the bones of the treacherously murdered Brisbane lay bleaching in the sun, and whither his body had been dragged at the heels of the Gauchoes' horses ere life was extinct, but conscience whispered that the motives which induced me to join in the cattle hunt, to which neither duty nor necessity called me, were those which, when fostered in untutored breasts, whose passions were unrestrained, led to as foul a tragedy as ever disgraced humanity. That they produced effects in us, the following little anecdote will show: its sequel was a subject of bitter regret to all concerned in it.

"The wild horse roams at large, in troops of twenty to forty over the northern parts of the Western Island; and has often afforded sport, especially to the Gauchoe, when no other game was at his mercy. Shortly before leaving the islands, we had heard of a fine heifer having herded with a troop of horses; and knowing that it would be long before we should again taste fresh beef, of which the ships had lately run very short, the said heifer became the desire of our mess. A party with five guns and a dog was formed, and left Berkeley Sound early one morning, with the intention of capturing the young wanderer. During a twelve miles' walk, the subject of eating horse-flesh was discussed; and the grim prospect of spending a season in