3 - Beagle’s Return with an Unexpected Companion

After 15 months, the Captain, who was aware of the repeated criticisms to his project by the English press and the public opinion in general, considered that it was time to return the Fueguinos to their land and put the experiment into practice.

The Captain had a hot temper and caustic personality. Suicidal ideas hovered in his mind, since he was aware of his family background and, what is more, his predecessor in command of the Beagle had taken his own life. This is why he needed a nice travel companion that would help him to drive away those ghosts.

John Stevens Henlow, a Botany Professor at Cambridge, recommended a 22 year-old naturalist, who had never before crossed the ocean, for this position.

A young Charles Darwin, who had not had a really successful academic performance and who still believed in the divine creation according to the Bible (he was a priest apprentice), left in 1834 from the port of Plymouth.  He started, with the Captain and the three aborigines, what would eventually become a paradigmatic journey in human history.  

Upon reaching the bay of Wulaia, Jemmy and the other Yámanas were set free, with some items they had brought from England but which would be useless in their villages. The Captain and Darwin continued with the journey, traveling along several places of South America. Fitz Roy became the first captain to go into the Beagle Channel. Among other places, in 1834 and after sailing up the Santa Cruz River, they reached the Cerro Chaltén area, which in 1877 the Expert Francisco Moreno would name after the Captain, in recognition of his important pioneer activity in Patagonia.

The Captain looked forward to seeing the fruits of his experiment, but Darwin discouraged him and minimized the importance of the matter. A letter to his sister, Susan, reveals his belief in the reversibility of the education: “It will be very interesting and -I’m afraid- also painful to see poor Jemmy Button and the others. I guess we will find them naked and half starving, or otherwise devoured in the last winter”.

He was interested in specimens of living organisms and fossils he found in the expeditions. These observations would be the basis for the renowned Theory of the Origin of Species, which would be a benchmark in the history of Modern Science.

Despite Darwin’s little enthusiasm in the experiment, the Captain would not give up and decided to go back for Jemmy.

4 - The Experiment Fails

The Captain is nervous, walks from side to side of the deck. The village where he had picked up Jemmy had been abandoned, the huts are empty. For him, Tierra del Fuego represents a sepulcher filled with dead people.

It is already night. A group of canoes approaches the Beagle. Disappointment cannot be greater. There is Jemmy, showing an almost complete nakedness but for a rotten cloth hanging from his groin. His hair is long and dirty; his body is undernourished; his skin, abandoned; his eyes, worn out.Nothing is left of the gentleman who used to impress London’s high society.

Half an hour later, he is sitting at the Captain's table, holding the cutlery so as not to offend his host, though he cannot hide a strangeness gesture, the same that showed in that first overseas trip.        
 
The conversation between the Captain and Jemmy must have been something like this:

- “What has happened, Jemmy?” Is it that you don’t remember anything of what happened these last years?”
-“I’m sorry. I’d rather not remember. Besides, I’m really well just like this.”
-“But, you look sick! You need to eat.”
-“I’m fine, Captain, I appreciate your concerns, but I’m really fine.”
-“Are you sure you don’t want to travel with us? We'll have a great time together and we'll keep you in good shape."

But Jemmy has no intention of moving away from his place or looking alike another culture. This time no one forces him. He reaches out his hand to the Captain with enough pride and assurance, and comes back to his canoe. Lit by a torch, it stirs up the waters with the glow of the living fire of the end of the world.

*Jemmy Button was tried and acquitted in Port Stanley, in the Malvinas Islands (Falkland Islands), after having been accused of slaughtering missioners in one of the Beagle Channel islands. He died in Cape Horn due to a smallpox epidemic that reduced the Yámana population by half.