From Charles Darwin's Beagle Diary, 12-Feb-1834:
12th With very baffling winds we anchored late in the evening in Gregory Bay, where our friends the Indians anxiously seemed to desire our presence. During the day we passed close to Elizabeth Island, on North end of which there was a party of Fuegians with their canoe &c. — They were tall men & clothed in mantles; & belong probably to the East Coast; the same set of men we saw in Good Success Bay; they clearly are different from the Fuegians, & ought to be called foot Patagonians. — Jemmy Button had a great horror of these men, under the name of “Ohens men”. — “When the leaf is red, he used to say, Ohens men come over the hill & fight very much.” —
Cambridge University Library
If you had asked him three years earlier, I’m pretty sure Darwin would not have predicted that he would spend his 25th birthday encountering Patagonian natives and hearing horror stories about them from a Fuegian (and having a mountain named after him). He would, more likely, have predicted that he would spend it in his parsonage somewhere, maybe drafting next Sunday’s sermon.
You never know what life might hold in store for you.
...charming post.