184 GUANACO MEAT—SKUNK. Aug. 1828. 
pounds weight ; and cost altogether ten pounds of tobacco, 
forty biscuits, and six pocket-knives. At first a biscuit was 
considered equivalent to forty or fifty pounds of meat ; but as 
the demand increased, the price rose four or five hundred per 
cent. With the Patagonians were two of Mr. Low’s crew, who 
had left him. They were Portuguese, in a miserable state, and 
appeared to be thoroughly ashamed of being the companions of 
such a dirty set: they could not speak English, and could give 
us very little information. They had not then assumed the 
Indian garb, although, from the state of their clothes, they 
would very soon be obliged to adopt it. 
At Pecket’s Harbour a few words of the native language 
were collected, which are very different from those given by 
Falkner, in his description of the Patagonian natives: he says 
himself, that the language of the northern Indians differs 
materially from that of the ‘ Yacana Cunnees.’ 
During Lieutenant Graves’s communication with the natives, 
at Pecket’s Harbour, he obtained some interesting information 
respecting these Indians, which will be given in a subsequent 
part of the work. 
The Adelaide brought me a few very gratifying additions 
to my zoological collection, among which was the Zorillo, or 
Skunk, of the Pampas; differing in no way whatever from the 
species found about the River Plata, in such numbers as to 
impregnate the air with their disagreeable odour for many miles 
around. 
I have frequently found the scent of this offensive little ani- 
mal distinctly perceptible when I was on board the Adventure, 
lying at anchor about two miles from Monte Video, with the 
wind blowing from the land.* 
* D’Azara, in his Essai sur l’Histoire Naturelle des Quadrupédes de 
Paraguay, gives the following account of this animal, which he calls 
Yagouaré. It burrows in the ground, eats insects, eggs, and birds, when 
it can surprise them, and moves about the plains and fields both by day 
and night in search of food; brushing the ground with its body, and 
carrying its tail horizontally. It regards not the presence of man or 
beast; unless an attempt be made to injure or take it, when it gathers up 
its body, bristles up the hairs of its tail, erecting it vertically; and in 
this 
