DEATH — BUHIAL. 181 



Jemmy Button was also very superstitious, and a great 

 believer in omens and dreams. He would not talk of a dead 

 person, saying, with a grave shake of the head, " no good, no 

 good talk ; my country never talk of dead man." While at sea, 

 on board the Beagle, about the middle of the year 1832, he 

 said one morning to Mr. Bynoe, that in the night some man 

 came to the side of his hammock, and whispered in his ear 

 that his father was dead. Mr. Bynoe tried to laugh him out 

 of the idea, but ineffectually. He fully believed that such was 

 the case, and maintained his opinion up to the time of finding 

 his relations in the Beagle Channel, when, I regret to say, he 

 found that his father had died some months previously. He 

 did not forget to remind Mr. Bynoe (his most confidential 

 friend) of their former conversation, and, with a significant 

 shake of the head said, it was " bad— very bad," Yet those 

 simple words, as Mr. Bynoe remarked, seemed to express the 

 extent of his sorrow, for after that time he said no more about 

 his father. This subsequent silence, however, might have been 

 caused by the habit already noticed, of never mentioning the 

 dead. 



When a person dies, his family wrap the body in skins, and 

 carry it a long way into the woods ; there they place it upon 

 broken boughs, or pieces of solid wood, and then pile a great 

 quantity of branches over the corpse. This is the case among 

 the Tekeenica and Alikhoolip tribes, as well as the Pecheray ; 

 but how the others dispose of their dead, I know not, excepting 

 that, on the west coast, some large caves have been found, in 

 which were many human bodies in a dried state. One of these 

 caves is mentioned in Byron's narrative of the wreck of the 

 Wager : and another was seen by Mr. Low, which will be 

 spoken of in describing the natives of the western coast of 

 Patagonia (the Chonos Indians), who from their intercourse 

 with the Spaniards may be supposed to have acquired ideas 

 somewhat more enlarged than those of the southernmost regions 

 — the Alikhoolip and Tekeenica. I prefer relating all that I 

 know of these tribes, in consequence of the intercourse carried 

 on with them by the Beagle'^s officers and myself, and the visit 



