Physically the Onas are giants. They are not, however, seven or eight feet in height, as the early explorers reported their neighbours and nearest relatives, the Patagonians, to be. Their average height is close to six feet, a few attain six feet and six inches, and a few are under six feet. The women are not quite so tall, but they are more corpulent. There is, perhaps, no race in the world with a more perfect physical development than the Ona men. This unique development is due to the topography of their country and the distribution of game, which makes long marches constantly necessary. The Ona men are certainly the greatest cross-country runners on the American continent. The mental equipment of the Ona is by no means equal to his splendid physical development. He understands very well the few arts of chase which he finds necessary to maintain a food-supply. His game in the past has been easily gotten; his needs have been few, which fact accounts for the lack of inventive skill displayed in his instruments of chase. The home-life, the house, the clothing,--everything portrays this lack of progressive skill. Instead of the children being well dressed and well cared for, as is the rule among savage races, they are mostly naked, poorly fed, badly trained, and altogether neglected, not because of a lack of paternal love, but because of the mental lethargy of the people. It is the same as to shelter and the garments. They have abundant material to make good tents and warm, storm-proof houses; but they simply bunch up a few branches, and throw to the windward a few skins, and then shiver, complaining of their miserable existence. [Illustration: Ona Hunter Ready for Action.] It has never fallen to my lot to listen to a language so odd, so strikingly peculiar, as that of the Ona. Some of my companions on the _Belgica_ used to amuse themselves at my expense by declaring that from a distance the talk of a group of Onas was like that of a group of Englishmen. To this I have protested, for that statement is certainly a libel upon English. This might be said, with considerable truth, of the Yahgan tongue, which is smooth and easy, but of the grunting, choking, spasmodic talk of the Onas it is decidedly untrue. Many of the words are not difficult of pronunciation, nor is the construction of sentences hard, but in every fifth or sixth word there is a sound impossible of reproduction by any one who has not had years of practice. These sounds offer sudden breaks in the flow of words and the speaker, by efforts which suggest the getting of sounds from the stomach, struggles for something far down in his throat. He hacks, and coughs, and grunts, distorting his face in the most inhuman manner momentarily, and then passes on to the next stumbling block, or hot potato, or whatever it is which makes the poor mortal suffer such tortures of speech. I always felt like giving an Ona an emetic when I heard him talk.