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. 



