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

1830. LETTEIl FUEGIAXS. 5 but high and rugged island, detached from the main land, and twelve miles distant from Townshend Harbour. " Mr. Murray reached the place, and secured his party and the boat in a cove near the cape : but during a very dark night, some Fuegians, whose vicinity was not at all suspected, approached with the dexterous cunning peculiar to savages and stole the boat. " Thus deprived of the means of returning to the Beagle, and unable to make their situation known, Mr. Murray and his party formed a sort of canoe, or rather basket, with the branches of trees and part of their canvas tent, and in this machine three men made tlieir way back to the Beagle, by his directions : yet, although favoured by the only fine day that occurred during the three weeks which the Beagle passed in Townshend Harbour, this basket was twenty hours on its passage. " Assistance was immediately given to the master and the other men, and a chase for our lost boat was begun, which lasted many days, but was unsuccessful in its object, although much of the lost boat's gear was found, and the women and children of the families from whom it was recovered, were brought on board as hostages. The men, excepting one of them, escaped from us, or were absent in our missing boat. " At the end of February the Beagle anchored in Christmas Sound ; but before this time all our prisoners had escaped, ex- cept three little girls, two of whom we restored to their own tribe, near ' Whale-boat Sound,' and the other is now on board. " From the first canoe seen in Christmas Sound, one man was taken as a hostage for the recovery of our boat, and to become an interpreter and guide. He came to us with little reluctance, and appeared unconcerned. " A few days afterwards, traces of our boat were found at some wigwams on an island in Christmas Sound, and from the families inhabiting those wigwams I took another young man, for the same purpose as that above-mentioned. No useful information respecting our lost boat was, however, gained from them, before we were obliged to leave that coast, and she remained the prize of their companions.