These however were Fuegians, and the Patagonians were very angry with them.

Captain Gardiner even ventured to remain alone with Johnstone among this people, while San Leon went on to Port Famine in the _Montgomery_, which was in search of wood; but, in the meantime, he could do nothing but hold a little monosyllabic communication; and once, when he and his servant both went out at the same time, they lost their dinner, which, left to simmer over the fire, proved irresistible to the Patagonians.

They, however, differed from the Fuegians in not ordinarily being thieves.
A chief named Wissale arrived with a body of his tribe with whom he had been purchasing horses on the Rio Negro, and bringing with him an American negro named Isaac, who had three years since run away from a whaler, and who spoke enough English to be a useful interpreter.
Wissale, with Isaac's help, was made to perceive Captain Gardiner's intentions sufficiently to promise to make him welcome if he should return, and to declare that he should be glad to learn good things.

There seemed so favourable an opening that the Captain made up his mind to take up his abode there with his family to prepare the way for a missionary in Holy Orders, for whom he never deemed himself more than a pioneer.
After distributing presents to the friendly Patagonians, he embarked, and making a weary passage, reached the Falkland Islands, where he found the two ships _Erebus_ and _Terror_ anchored, in the course of their voyage of Antarctic discovery.

The presence of the two captains and their officers was a great pleasure and enlivenment to the Gardiners, who received from them many comforts very needful in that inclement climate to people lately come from some of the hottest regions of the southern hemisphere.
Whalers continually put in, but not one, even though Captain Gardiner's offers rose to 300_l._, would undertake to go out of his course to Patagonia to convey him and his family, and he would not trust his wife and children on board that wretched craft the _Montgomery_, so he waited on at the Falkland Islands, doing what good he could there, and expecting the answer of a letter he had despatched to the Church Missionary Society, begging for the appointment of a clergyman to this field of labour.