All around him, hundreds of Yamanas try to touch him, to smell the strange flavour emanating from this small fellow they do not recognize. Only wearing filth that protects them from the cold, they upset this dandy and the girl who stands at his sides.
Fuegia Basket is still thinking of this day she was presented at the King and the Queen. Nervously, she makes turn a sunshade above her head and mumble to these “savages” who were her brothers, in English she reminds : “I, forgotten speak Yamana”.
Beside them, stand three other strange creatures landed from a canot much larger than those used by Yamanas: Robert Fitz Roy, captain of the brig HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin, a young man that Jemmy and Fuegia have immediately hated, and Pastor Mathews who reads these so beautiful stories that they do not all understand.They all left the port of Devonport in England, on December 27, 1831, nearly one year ago. The Captain Fitz Roy was commissioned to continue the work of chronometric and topographic readings made by the Captain King between 1826 and 1830. He makes cast anchor this afternoon of December 17, 1832, in a bay the English maps of the time mention under the name of “Bay of Good Success” close to the Navarino island.
On this island will end an experiment involuntarily started 3 years earlier, during the first Beagle expedition. At that time, a group of Yamanas had seized a small whale-boat they found useful to go to fish. The Captain, to recover this property of “His Majesty”, had not hesitated to take 4 Indians as hostages.
The aforementioned hostages found very pleasant the fact of washing and dressing themselves. So that they stayed on board, quickly becoming the mascots of the crew which gave to them ridiculous names. When they arrived in England they became the crowd attraction. Showered with gifts, they were the guests of the London best society salons.
Feeling guilty to have transformed them into fair attractions, Robert Fitz Roy thus seizes the opportunity of a second voyage to take them home with Pasteur Mathews in charge to found a mission on the island which faces the current site of the Ushuaïa city. Thus it explains this surrealist episode of Beagle expedition…Thanks to Jean Raspail for this anecdote drawn from his book "Adios, Tierra del Fuego" Ed.Albin Michel
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