At p. 437 (Lubbock) it is said, "Admiral Fitzroy never witnessed or heard of any act of a decidedly religious character among the Fuegians." Still, as Sir John admits, "some of the natives suppose that there is a great black man in the woods who knows everything, and cannot be escaped." If this is not the devil, it looks very like him. Again, p. 469, Mr Mathews says, speaking of the Fuegians, "he sometimes heard a great howling or lamentation about _sunrise_ in the morning; and upon asking Jemmy Button what occasioned the outcry, he could obtain no satisfactory answer; the boy only saying, 'people very sad, cry very much.'" Upon which Sir John remarks, "This appears so natural and sufficient an explanation, that why the outcry should be 'supposed to be devotional' I must confess myself unable to see" (469). Now, if this was not their traditional notion and mode of prayer, degraded according to the measure of their degeneracy, the degeneracy is at least proved in another way, for, being still reasonable beings, they had, according to the account, congregated together to send up a lamentation, which, if it was not prayer, could be likened only to the moonlight howling of wolves. This mode of prayer resembles what Father Loyer and the missionary Oldendorp (Pritchard, i. 197) tells us of the negroes. Father Loyer "declares that they have a belief in a universally powerful Being, and to him they address prayers. Every morning after _they rise_ they go to the river side to wash, and throwing a handful of water on their head, or pouring sand with it to express their humility, they join their hands and then open them, whisper softly the word 'exsuvais.'" Oldendorp says (p. 202): "The negroes profess their dependence on the Deity, ... they pray _at the rising_ and setting of the sun,[254] on eating and drinking, and when they go to war." Compare also Helps' "Spanish Conquest in America," i. 285:-- "The worship of the Peruvians was not the mere worship of the sun alone as of the most beautiful and powerful thing which they beheld; but they had _also_ a worship of a far more elevated and refined nature, addressed to Pachacamac, the soul of the universe, _whom_ they hardly dared to name; and when they were obliged to name this Being, they did so inclining the head and the whole body, now _lifting_ up the eyes to heaven, now lowering them to the ground, and _giving kisses in the air_. To Pachacamac they made no temple and offered no sacrifices, but they adored him in their hearts."[255] [254] After all, is there not something in their mode of prayer which recalls the language of Psalm cxl., "Dirigatur oratio mea sicut incensum in conspectu tuo: _elevatio manuum mearum sacrificium vespertinum_."