“How many were present?”
“Not one; but no meeting is better than a bad one.”
He could not obtain means enough for a well-appointed expedition such as he wished for; but he urged that a small experimental one might be sent out, consisting of himself, four sailors, one carpenter, with three boats, two huts, and provisions for half a year. He hoped to establish a station on Staten Island, whence the Fuegians could be visited, and the stores kept out of their reach.
Having found the men, he embarked on board the barque Clymene, which was bound for Payta, in Peru, and was landed on Picton Island; but before the vessel had departed the Fuegians had beset the little party, and shown themselves so obstinately and mischievously thievish, that it was plainly impossible for so small a party to hold their ground among them. Before there could be a possibility of convincing them of even the temporal benefit of the white man’s residence among them, they would have stripped and carried off everything from persons who would refrain from hurting them. So, once more, the Captain drew up the net which had taken nothing, decided that the only mission which would suit the Fuegians must be afloat, and went on to Payta in the Clymene.
While in Peru, he met with a Spanish lady, who asked if he knew a friend of hers who came from Genoa, and then proceeded to inquire which was the largest city, Genoa or Italy, and if Europe was not a little on this side of Spain, while a priest asked if London was a part of France. After spending a little time in distributing Bibles in Peru, he made his way home by the way of Panama, and on his arrival made an attempt to interest the Moravians in the cause so near his heart, thinking that what they had done in Greenland proved their power of dealing with that savage apathy that springs from inclemency of climate, but the mission was by them pronounced impracticable.
In the meantime, his former ground, Port Natal, was in a more hopeful state. Tremendous battles had been fought
between Dingarn and the boers; but, in 1839, Panda, Dingarn’s brother, finding his life threatened, went over to the enemy, carrying 4,000 men with him, and thus turned the scale. Dingarn was routed, fled, and was murdered by the tribe with whom he had taken refuge, and Panda became Zulu king, while the boers occupied Natal, and founded the city of Pieter Maritzburg as the capital of a Republic; but the disputes between them and the Zulus led to the interference of the Governor of the Cape, and finally Natal was made a British colony, with the Tugela for a boundary; and, as Panda’s government was exceedingly violent and bloody, his subjects were continually flocking across the river to put themselves under British protection, and were received on condition of paying a small yearly rate for every hut in each kraal, and conforming themselves to English law, so far as regarded the suppression of violence and theft. One of the survivors of Gardiner’s old pupils, meeting a gentleman who was going to England, sent him the following message: “Tell Cappan Garna he promise to come again if his hair was as white as his shirt, and we are waiting for him;” and he added a little calabash snuff-box as a token. But the Captain had made his promise to return contingent upon the Kaffirs of his settlement taking no part in the war, and they, poor things, had, with the single exception of his own personal attendant, Umpondombeni, broken this condition; so that he did not deem himself bound by it. Moreover, means were being taken for providing a mission for Natal, and Christian teachers were already there, while he regarded his own personal exertions as the only hope for the desolate natives of Cape Horn. So he only sent a letter and a present to the man, urging him to attach himself to a mission-station, and then turned again to his unwearied labour in the Patagonian and Fuegian cause. His little Society found it impossible to raise means for the purchase of a brigantine, and he therefore limited his plans to the equipment of two launches and two smaller boats. He would store in these provisions for six months, and take a crew of Cornish fishermen, used to the stormy Irish Sea. As to the funds, a lady at Cheltenham gave 700l., he himself 300l. The boats were purchased, three Cornishmen, named Pearce, Badcock, and Bryant, all of good character, volunteered from the same village; Joseph Erwin, the carpenter, who had been with him before, begged to go with him again, because, he said, “being
with Captain Gardiner was like a heaven upon earth; he was such a man of prayer.” One catechist was Richard Williams, a surgeon; the other John Maidment, who was pointed out by the secretary of the Young Men’s Association in London; and these seven persons, with their two launches, the Pioneer and the Speedwell, were embarked on board the Ocean Queen, and sailed from Liverpool on the 7th of September, 1850. They carried with them six months’ provisions, and the committee were to send the same quantity out in due time, but they failed to find a ship that would undertake to go out of its course to Picton Island, and therefore could only send the stores to the Falklands, to be thence despatched by a ship that was reported to go monthly to Tierra del Fuego for wood.
Meantime, the seven, with their boats and their provisions, were landed on Picton Island, and the Ocean Queen pursued her way. Time passed on, and no more was heard of them. The Governor of the Falklands had twice made arrangements for ships to touch at Picton Island, but the first master was wrecked, the second disobeyed him; and in great anxiety, on the discovery of this second failure, he sent, in October 1851, a vessel on purpose to search for them. At the same time, the Dido, Captain William Morshead, had been commanded by the Admiralty to touch at the isles of Cape Horn and carry relief to the missionaries.
On the 21st of October, in a lonely little bay called Spaniards’ Harbour, in Picton Island, the Falkland Island vessel found the Speedwell on the beach, and near it an open grave. In the boat lay one body, near the grave another. They returned with these tidings, and in the meantime the Dido having come out, her boats explored the coast, and a mile and a half beyond the first found the other boat, beside which lay a skeleton, the dress of which showed it to be the remains of Allen Gardiner. Near at hand was a cavern, outside which were these words painted, beneath a hand:—