NATIVES ON BOARI>. 267 



facetl little Indian boy from the Rio Negro, whom 

 wo had for some months on board, soon perceived 

 this, and used to mock him : Jemmy, who was al- 

 ways rather jealous of the attention paid to this lit- 

 tle boy, did not at all like this, and used to say, with 

 rather a contemptuous twist of his head, " Too 

 much skylark." It seems yet wonderful to me, 

 when I think over all his many good qualities, that 

 he should have been of the same race, and doubt- 

 less 23artaken of the same character, with the mis- 

 erable, degraded savages whom we first met here. 

 Lastly, Fuegia Basket was a nice, modest, reserved 

 young girl, with a rather pleasing but sometimes 

 sullen expression, and very^ quick in learning any- 

 thing, especially languages. This she showed in 

 picking up some Portuguese and Spanish when 

 left on shore for only a short time at Rio de Janei- 

 ro and Monte Video, and in her knowledge of Eng- 

 lish. York Minster was veiy jealous of any atten- 

 tion paid to her ; for it was clear he determined to 

 marry her as soon as they were settled on shore. 



Although all three could both speak and under- 

 stand a good deal of English, it was singulai'ly dif- 

 ficult to obtain much information from them con- 

 cerning the habits of their countrymen : this was 

 paitly owing to their apparent difficulty in under- 

 standing the simplest alternative. Every one ac- 

 customed to very young children knows how sel- 

 dom one can get an answer even to so simple a 

 question as whether a thing is black or white ; the 

 idea of black or white seems alternately to fill their 

 minds. So it was with these Fuegians, and hence 

 it was generally impossible to find out, by cross- 

 questioning, whether one had rightly understood 

 anything which they had asserted. Their sight 

 was remarkably acute : it is well knowni that sail- 

 ors, from long practice, can make out a distant 



