while the thatches are partly of rushes and partly of broad strips of
bark.

Such are the dwellings of Orundelico's people, though but for a part of
the year, while they engage in a certain fishery of periodical
occurrence. On an island, down the Murray Narrow, they have a larger
"wigwamery" of more permanent residences, and there the very old and
young of the community now are, only the able-bodied being at the
fishing-station.

When they were with the Ailikoleeps, the castaways believed themselves
among the lowest and most degraded beings in the human scale; but about
this they have now changed their minds, a short acquaintance with the
Tekeneekas having revealed to them a type of man still lower, and a
state of existence yet more wretched, if that be possible; indeed,
nothing can come much nearer to the "missing link" than the natives of
central Tierra del Fuego. Though of less malevolent disposition than
those who inhabit the outside coasts, they are also less intelligent and
less courageous, while equally the victims of abject misery.

Alas! Jemmy Button is no longer Jemmy Button, but again the savage
Orundelico, he too having gone back to barbarism. His dress, or rather
the absence of it, his greasy and mud-bedaubed skin, his long unkempt
hair, and the wild animal-like expression of his features--all attest
his relapse into a condition of savagery, total and complete. Not a
vestige of civilised man remains with him to show that he has ever been
a mile from the Murray Narrow.

But stay, I am wronging him--twice wronging him. He has not entirely
forgotten the foreign tongue taught him on board the _Beagle_ and during
a year's residence in England; while something he remembers also--
something better--the kindness there shown him and the gratitude due for
it.

He is paying the debt now as best he can, and on this account Captain
Gancy has consented to make a brief stop at the fishing-station. There
are also two other distinct reasons for his doing so. Before proceeding
farther, he wishes to obtain more information about the Yapoos, and he
needs a fresh supply of provisions--that furnished by Eleparu having
been neither abundant nor palatable.

Orundelico can do better for them, even to providing fresh meat--a thing
they have not tasted for a long time. They are now in a region where
roams the guanaco [Note 1]; and the Tekeneekas are hunters as well as
fishermen. A party has been sent inland to procur