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

134 APPENDIX. which had very nearly cost me my life. I was resolved to eat no more limpets till we landed, which we did some time after, upon an island. I then took notice that the Indians brought aU their sheUs ashore, and laid them above high-water mark. Here, as I was going to eat a large bunch of berries I had gathered from a tree, for they looked very tempting, one of the Indians snatched them out of my hand and threw them away, making me to understand that they were poisonous. Thus, in all probability, did these people now save my life, who, a few hours before, were going to take it from me for throwing away a shell." " One day, we fell in with about forty Indians, who came down to the beach we landed on, curiously painted.* Our cacique seemed to understand but little of their language, and it sounded to us very different from what we had heard before. However, they made us comprehend that a ship had been upon the coast not far from where we then were, and that she had a red flag : this, we understood some time after, to have been the Anna Pink, whose adventures are . , particularly related in Lord Anson's voyage ; and we passed through the very harbour she had lain in."t • Probably in the neighbourhood of the ' Estero de Aysen.' in lat. 45° S — R. F. ' t No — not through the harbour, but within^ twenty miles of it, I shonld suppose. — R. F. V