It was not until the 25th of May (eleven days after the shipwreck) that provisions began to be regularly issued from the store tent, which was guarded by the officers night and day. On the 28th, three canoes with Indians came alongside the wreck, and from them they purchased "a dog or two and some very fine mussels."
The language of these men was utterly unintelligible: their clothing was composed of skins and feathers, and they had evidently never seen a white man before. But the castaways contrived to ascertain from them that they were on some island on the coast of Patagonia, about three hundred miles north of the Straits of Magellan.
[to be continued.]
