Not wishing to lose the boat, and deeming it advisable to give the natives a lesson, Commander Fitzroy took another pinnace ashore and, with half a dozen bluejackets, made a descent on the nearest encampment, captured the first family he could lay hands on, and took them back to the brig to be held in pawn for the stolen boat. This move, of course, answered its purpose; the boat was restored and the hostages liberated. But of these there were three to whom the commander had taken a special fancy: a stalwart young fellow of nineteen whom (from the adjacent mountain which Cook had so named) he had dubbed “York Minster,” and a boy and girl of about fourteen. York and the girl, Fuegia, on being asked if they would like to come to England, joyfully accepted the offer; and the other boy was readily exchanged by his father for a pearl shirt-button.
The enthusiastic young commander brought these three home with him, endeavoured to teach them English, and dressed them respectably; and after he had been ashore for about two years, decided to take them back to their country as a pattern to their friends and relations. He engaged a missionary—a Mr. Matthews—and was on the point of chartering a 97 small vessel and taking the natives back at his own expense, when, to his joy, he heard that his old brig was to be sent a second time to the Horn and that he, now gazetted post-captain, was to have command of her. It was on this voyage that he took with him, as naturalist, Charles Darwin, a young fellow not long down from Cambridge.
In December, 1832, the brig anchored in the Bay of Good Success, and her arrival was hailed by a tatterdemalion group of Fuegians who piled their fires high and frantically waved their scanty garments as though to scare off the intruders. These people of the eastern side of the island were a far more robust set than the typical Fuegians of farther west; many of them were over six feet high, and all boasted some sort of clothing—usually a mantle of guanaco (llama) skin. Fitzroy and other officers went ashore, bearing presents, at sight of which the savages abandoned their distrustful and defensive bearing and showed every willingness to be friendly. Their chief had his hair confined by a rough head-dress of feathers, and his coppery face was painted with transverse bars, after the fashion of the Indians of the North.
The Englishmen distributed pieces of red cloth, which each recipient immediately tied round his neck. Thanks for these bounties were offered in a series of “clucks,” which a horse would assuredly have translated as “gee-up”; and further, by sundry pats on the breasts of the donors. After Captain Fitzroy had been thus patted three times by the chief, it occurred to him to return the compliment, a proceeding which highly delighted the whole tribe. But the most 98 exciting scene was when one of the sailors left in charge of the boat began to sing absently to himself. In an instant the Indians deserted the group of officers, rushed madly down the beach again, and almost grovelled before the singer, considerably to his amazement.
“All right; sing up, my man; let’em hear you,” cried Captain Fitzroy encouragingly; for the bashful performer had stopped somewhat abruptly on finding himself thus distinguished. “Bear a hand, you lads; he’s shy.”
Thus urged, the grinning bluejackets struck up a rousing sea-chorus, the effect whereof was to make even the important-looking chief stand open-mouthed and wave his hands in wonder and delight.
As the first meeting with the savages had been so successful, on his second landing the Captain was accompanied by York Minster and the other two natives, Jemmy Button, now a strapping fellow of eighteen, and Fuegia Basket, already a grown woman, and betrothed to York. The Indians’ attitude towards them was one of curiosity as intelligent as such people are capable of. They felt their English-made clothes and compared them half contemptuously with the bright-buttoned uniforms of the officers, and the chief, pointing to a few straggling hairs on York Minster’s chin, inquired why he did not shave them off after the Indian fashion. The colour of their visitors was the greatest mystery to them. Jemmy and York were dressed like white men, and had short hair, and yet were not white. York knew their language and Jemmy did not. This was very puzzling. Then—was Jemmy 99 the same colour “all over”? The chief made him strip his sleeve, but while this was being done something else happened to distract the savages’ attention. Mr. Bynoe, the ship’s surgeon, had been examining one or two bad sores on the face of a native, and now stepped back to a rock-pool to wash his hands.
That a man should dream of washing at all was a mystery to the Fuegians (in fact, during the whole of the brig’s cruise in these islands the practice never failed to attract admiration, though it does not seem to have gained converts), but the doctor had thrown off his pilot-jacket and rolled up his shirt-sleeves for the performance. This more than staggered the beholders, so that Jemmy saw himself rudely neglected; for the Englishman’s arms were a different colour from that of his hands!
It was the white men’s turn to be inspected again. Everyone, from the Captain to the boat’s crew, was implored to show his arms, and this only led to further mystification, for while the hands of the officers were tanned and their arms white, the brown on the seamen extended to the elbows. A full parliament was at once held, but the debate had to be abandoned; the matter was too abstruse for the Fuegian brain.
Mr. Darwin created a diversion by attracting the Captain’s attention to a very tall fellow among the group; and to settle an argument between them as to his abnormal height, Fitzroy called to him the tallest of the boat’s crew, and told him to stand back to back with the rival giant. With the natural vanity of the savage, the Fuegian seemed to guess in a moment what was being said about him, and no sooner was he 100 placed back to back with the seaman than he endeavoured, first to edge himself on to higher ground, and, failing that, to stand a-tiptoe. When York Minster explained to him that he was the taller by two finger-joints, he began to swagger about as if he had bought the island.