When the Beagle set sail from Plymouth for the south Atlantic in 1831, with Darwin in the charge of Captain Robert Fitzroy, it was also taking three young Patagonian Indians home after a bizarre social experiment. His charges - two of them still children - had spent the previous 15 months living on the outskirts of London, where they had been the subjects of what, viewed through modern eyes, seems like an astonishing act of imperialism. The trip back to the southern hemisphere was also a return journey for Fitzroy, who had originally been sent there, in charge of the Beagle, to survey this remote part of the globe for the British government. On that initial journey Fitzroy had taken four local "savages" from the southernmost tip of the continent, known as Tierra del Fuego, as retribution for the stealing of one of his whaling boats. DARWIN'S THOUGHTS Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle makes note of the Patagonian travellers He notes tha...
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