The following morning, therefore, Captain Billings, Jorrocks, and I, with three of the sailors—Mr Macdougall being left behind at his own request in charge of the remainder of the crew—started on the investigating expedition, directing the boat first towards a small island lying-to the westwards, and the closest to us of all that we could distinguish from the beach where our camp was.
This island, however, we found to be uninhabited, and even more bare and sterile than the one we had landed on; so, hoisting the small lugsail which the jolly-boat carried, we made over more to the north-west, towards Wollaston Island, the largest in the archipelago, and about the same distance away from us that the Isle of Wight is from Selsea Bill.
On reaching this we found a couple of native families living on the shore in rude huts, composed of the branches of trees, and with mud and stones heaped over them. The people were the ugliest I had ever seen, being more like baboons than men and women. They were dwarfish in stature, the tallest of the party not exceeding five feet in height, and the majority of the others quite a foot shorter. I noticed also, as the skipper had told me, that their apparel was of the very scantiest possible, consisting only of a piece of sealskin, which was movable, so that it could be placed on the most convenient side for protecting them against the weather.
They were not able to help us much, looking miserably off; but they were hospitable enough, offering us some mussels and fish, and berries similar to those we had seen on the arbutus trees on our own island.
If they could not assist us materially, they put us up to one thing, and that was how to catch fish; for, although we had seen many of them jumping in the water, and swimming about the beach in front of our encampment, we had been unable to capture any, owing to there not being a single hook brought in the boats; and, sailors not being accustomed to use pins about their garments, we could not make use of these for a substitute.
The Tierra del Fuegans had a rare dodge to supply the deficiency. They fastened a limpet to the end of their lines, and, heaving it into deep water, the fish readily gorges it; when, before he can bring it up again, they pull him out, and thus they get their fish without losing their mussel.
“They’re just like Turks!” cried Captain Billings, with a broad grin on his face.
“Why?” asked I, knowing that something funny was coming.
“Because they’re regular musselmen!” said the skipper, laughing out loudly at the old joke, Jorrocks and I, of course, joining in.
The natives spoke some sort of gibberish of a language which we could not understand; nor could we make them comprehend what we wished to learn with reference to the sealing schooners, although the skipper shouted out the word “ship” to them as loudly as he could bawl, thinking thereby to make himself more intelligible.