, 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. After six months' delay, the letter came, and proved to be
unfavourable; there was a falling off in the funds of the Society, and a
new and doubtful mission was thought undesirable. The Captain believed
that nothing but personal representations could prevail, and therefore
decided on going home to plead the cause of his Patagonians. He sailed
with his family for Rio in a small vessel, and the voyage could not have
been one of the least of the dangers, for the skipper was a Guacho who
had been a shoemaker, and knew nothing about seafaring, and there was not
a spare rope in the ship. From Rio Gardiner took a passage home, and
safely arrived, after six years of brave pioneering in three different
quarters of the globe.

He found, however, that the Church Missionary Society could not undertake
the Patagonian Mission, and neither could the London nor Wesleyan
Societies. He declared that every one grew cold when they heard of South
America, and viewed it as the natural inheritance of Giants Pope and
Pagan; and for this very reason he was the more bent upon doing his
utmost. Failing in his attack on Pagan he made an assault on Pope,
obtaining a grant of Bibles, Testaments, and tracts from the Bible
Society, and in 1843 sailed for Rio to distribute them; this time,
however, going alone, as his children were of an age to require an
English education and an English home.

He undertook this mission, in fact, chiefly for the purpose of continuing
his attempts to reach the Indian tribes. His journ