Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.2): between the years 1826 and 1836 : describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagles's circumnavigation of the globe

DEATH — BURIAL. 181 Jemmy Button was also very superstitious, and a great believer in omens and dreams. He would not talk of a dead person, saying, with a grave shake of the head, " no good, no good talk ; my country never talk of dead man." While at sea, on board the Beagle, about the middle of the year 1832, he said one morning to Mr. Bynoe, that io the night some man came to the side of his hammock, and whispered in his ear that his father was dead. Mr. Bynoe tried to laugh him out of the idea, but ineffectually. He fully believed that such was the case, and maintained his opinion up to the time of finding his relations in the Beagle Channel, when, I regret to say, he found that his father had died some months previously. He did not forget to remind Mr. Bynoe (his most confidential friend) of their former conversation, and, with a significant shake of the head said, it was " bad — very bad," Yet those simple words, as Mr. Bynoe remarked, seemed to express the extent of his sorrow, for after that time he said no more about his father. This subsequent silence, however, might have been caused by the habit abready noticed, of never mentioning the dead. When a person dies, his family wrap the body in skins, and carry it a long way into the woods ; there they place it upon broken boughs, or pieces of solid wood, and then pile a great quantity of branches over the corpse. This is the case among the Tekeenica and Alikhoolip tribes, as well as the Pecheray ; but how the others dispose of their dead, I know not, excepting that, on the west coast, some large caves have been found, in which were many human bodies in a dried state. One of these caves is mentioned in Byron's narrative of the wreck of the Wager : and another was seen by Mr. Low, which will be spoken of in describing the natives of the western coast of Patagonia (the Chonos Indians), who from their intercourse with the Spaniards may be supposed to have acquired ideas somewhat more enlarged than those of the southernmost regions — the Alikhoolip and Tekeenica. I prefer relating all that I know of these tribes, in consequence of the intercourse carried on with them by the Beagle's officers and myself, and the visit