The Captive in Patagonia

The next morning we took in coal and started for New York. I was seized, on the following day, for the first time in my life, with chills and fever, but partially recovered, under care of the ship’s physician, before arriving in port. We made New York without accident, and having spent two days in the city, the steamer State of Maine bore me to my home, January 13th, 1852, – after an absence of three years, lacking a month, – with a heart rising gratefully to God for his many interpositions in my behalf, to deliver me from the perils of the sea and the perils of the land.

It can scarcely be necessary, for the benefit of any reader who has followed me through the course of this narrative, to add any remarks on the hazards of visiting Patagonia, or the consequences likely to ensue in the event of shipwreck on that desolate coast. The land is dreary, and it were a sufficient trial of fortitude to be cast away upon it, – to run the imminent risk of perishing by cold, and hunger and thirst. But the extremest peril arising from the poverty of the country is exhilarating, compared with the tender mercies of the people. Rather than trust to their protection, better hide from the light of day and gnaw the bark of stunted trees for food, drinking, as I did, from the briny sea. The dread which has deterred voyagers from entering the country, or even touching the shore, unless armed to the teeth, offering articles of traffic with one hand and holding a loaded musket in the other, is no more than reasonable. I do not know that the country has ever been explored by civilized man. The officers and men of the Adventure and Beagle, two ships sent out by the British Admiralty to survey the Straits of Magellan in the years 1826, 1830, 1832 and 1834, examined and penetrated the country to a greater extent than any other voyagers.

If the other tribes inhabiting the country resemble that with which I was domesticated, it must be a hazardous enterprise for missionaries to attempt the propagation of the gospel among them. Even apart from this, the difficulty of gaining a subsistence there must prove an almost insuperable obstacle. The barrenness of the soil, and the want of water, render agriculture a desperate resource, and there is no spontaneous product of the earth to sustain life. To live like the savages would be simply impossible to men who have been habituated to the comforts of civilized life; I could not have survived many months of such hardship. Provisions would have to be imported; this difficulty seems sufficient to discourage, if not to prevent, efforts in that direction. When, to this, we add the cruelty, the duplicity, the treachery and blood-thirstiness of the people, I am unable to conjecture through what direct agency they can be reached by the influences of Christianity. Whether access to them could be gained through their Spanish American neighbors, or by enticing some of them, when young, into a more civilized society, and so opening an avenue of peaceable and beneficial intercourse, it is not easy to conclude, without actual experiment.

Since returning to this country, these views have been confirmed, by the narrative recently published of the sad fate of the English missionaries sent to Patagonia. Captain Gardiner, and three or four Cornish fishermen, who volunteered for this labor of love, were landed by a passing vessel somewhere, on the inhospitable coast. So inveterate was the hostility of the natives, they durst not trust themselves among them; they were driven, in their covered barges, from place to place; like their Master, having not, on the land, where to lay their heads. Arrangements had been made, before leaving England, to have provisions follow them; thirty-six barrels of provisions, destined for them, were found some time after, by a government vessel, at the Falkland Islands. The commander took them on board, and sailed for the place of their destination; upon their first landing, traces of the unfortunate men were found; and, on thorough search, directions were discovered to look for them at another place. They were followed from one stopping-place to another, till the grave of one of them was found, who had died of starvation. The survivors were traced to a spot where their boats lay on the shore, unoccupied; at a little distance off lay their bodies, unburied, their bones bleaching on the sand. The humane discoverers buried their remains. On lifting a stone from the mouth of a cave, there was disclosed a narrative of their sufferings, and of successive deaths, written by Captain Gardiner; at the date of the last entry he had not tasted food for four days. In all probability, he shared the fate of his brethren, – starvation, – and with him closed their melancholy history. A sad tale! Yet there were days and weeks when I would have gladly exchanged my lot for wanderings like theirs, upon the desert shore. But from those horrors I was mercifully delivered; they, in the prosecution of a sacred and benevolent errand, were cut down by the dispensation of Him who seeth not as man seeth.

It may occur to some reader that the deceptions I practised upon the natives, as frankly narrated, had a tendency to impair their confidence in white men, and thus to increase the difficulty of reaching them by Christian influences, and to render the lot of any poor man hereafter falling into their hands more desperate than it would otherwise be. Perhaps so; yet the danger does not seem so imminent, when we consider that they are entire strangers to truth. Probably no Patagonian’s experience or observation could furnish an example of consistent veracity, and they would not be likely to suspect the existence of such a virtue in any one. It is apparent, from their behavior in the “last scene of all” with me, that from first to last they vehemently mistrusted my statements; and their most likely comment on the report of the chief must have been, “I told you so.” The shock was less than if they had reposed a more generous confidence.

The notoriety which was given to my capture by the newspaper press called forth many expressions of sympathy from persons who knew nothing of me, except that I was a fellow-being in distress. To all such I tender my thanks. It is a grateful duty, in parting company with the reader, to renew the expression of thankful remembrance with which I recall the benefactors who, under God, rescued and befriended me, – Mr. Hall, and the noble-hearted captains, who fed and clothed me when hungry and naked, and conveyed me gratuitously to my destination. Nor can I forget the prompt action of the Honorable Secretary of the Navy, the efficient exertions of the officers of the Vandalia, or the generosity of Commodore Jones. I would also acknowledge, with the liveliest gratitude, my obligations to the Hon. Daniel Webster,1 the Hon. R. C. Winthrop, the Hon. George Evans, of Maine, and to the Hon. Joseph Grinnell, and the Hon. John H. Clifford, of New Bedford; – all of whom, when informed of my captivity, volunteered their aid, and made those representations to the Navy department which resulted in the despatch of the Vandalia on her humane mission. Nor must I omit to add my thanks to Mr. Denison, who kindly bore their memorials to Washington, and laid them before the department. If I acquired nothing more by my unlooked-for experience, I at least gained a warmer patriotism, and a profounder sense of the benignant wisdom of Providence.

1

Since this was written he has passed beyond the reach of my thanks; but this fact cannot suppress the utterance of gratitude which I owe to his august memory.