X 
FUEGIANS ON BOARD 
219 
was no Devil in his land. Jemmy was short, thick, and fat, but 
vain of his personal appearance ; he used always to wear gloves, 
his hair was neatly cut, and he was distressed if his well-polished 
shoes were dirtied. He was fond of admiring himself in a look¬ 
ing-glass ; and a merry-faced little Indian boy from the Rio 
Negro, whom we had for some months on board, soon perceived 
this, and used to mock him: Jemmy, who was always rather jealous 
of the attention paid to this little 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 doubtless partaken of the same character, with the 
miserable, 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 anything, especially languages. This she showed in 
picking up some Portuguese and Spanish, when left on shore for 
only a short time at Rio de Janeiro and Monte Video, and in 
her knowledge of English. York Minster was very jealous of 
any attention 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 understand a 
good deal of English, it was singularly difficult to obtain much 
information from them concerning the habits of their country¬ 
men : this was partly owing to their apparent difficulty in 
understanding the simplest alternative. Every one accustomed 
to very young children knows how seldom 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 known 
that sailors, from long practice, can make out a distant object 
much better than a landsman ; but both York and Jemmy 
were much superior to any sailor on board : several times they 
have declared what some distant object has been, and though 
doubted by every one, they have proved right when it has 
been examined through a telescope. They were quite conscious 
of this power ; and Jemmy, when he had any little quarrel 
