CONTENTS 1 December 27, 1831—March 1832: England to Brazil 1 2 April—]uly 1832: Rio de janeiro, Brazil 13 3 July 1832: Maldonado, Uruguay 31 4 July—August 1833: Argentina: Rio Negro to Bahia Blanca 46 5 August—September 1833: Bahia Blanca 60 6 September 1833: Bahia Blanca to Buenos Aires 71 7 September—October 1833 : Buenos Aires to Santa Fe and Return 83 8 November 1833—]anuary 1834: Uruguay and The VOYAGE of the BEAGLE Patagonia 98 9 April 1834: The Santa Cruz River March 1834: The Falkland Islands 120 by Charles Darwin, 10 December 1832—February 1833 abridged and edited by Millicent E. Selsam February—March 1834: Tierra del Fuego 137 11 May—june 1834: Strait of Magellan to the Pacific 161 Harper's and Row, Publishers 12 July-September 1834: Central Chile 172 1959 13 November 1834-—]anuary 1835: Chiloe and the Chonos Islands 183 14 January—March 1835: Chiloe and Concepcion: Great Earthquake 194 15 March—April 1835: Valparaiso and Across the Andes 207 16 April—]une 1835: From Valparaiso to Lima, Peru 227 17 September—October 1835: The Galdpagos Islands 236 18 October-December 1835: Tahiti and New Zealand 261 19 January—March 1836: Australia and Tasmania 276 20 April 1836: Cocos Islands 290 21 April 29-October 2, 1836: Mauritius to England 305 INTRODUCTION TO CHAPTER ONE 2 The Voyage of the Beagle portunity of improving himself—an opportunity that, he said, December 27, 183l—March 1832 “I threw away whilst at Cambridge.” England to Brazil Darwin found the Beagle “most beautiful” and elegantly fitted out with mahogany. It was a three-masted square-rigger, CHARLES DARWIN arrived at Plymouth on October 24, 1831, anned with cannon. It was to carry seventy-four persons, in- expecting to sail on the Beagle November 4. He had spent six cluding a squad of marines, an artist, a missionary for Tierra del busy weeks preparing for the voyage. He had consulted with Fuego, Darwin as naturalist, and three Fuegians whom Captain Professor Henslow at Cambridge. He had bought a pair of Fitzroy had seized as hostages on his previous trip and was now pistols, and collected a three-year supply of clothing. He had returning home. As the Beagle was only one hundred feet long assembled a collection of books on travel and the natural and had to carry enormous supplies for its planned three-year sciences and various instruments for scientific research. voyage, everyone was cramped for space. Darwin, however, Darwin was most impatient because he regarded leaving was given a very small cabin under the forecastle for the speci- England on the Beagle as the start of his “second life.” But in- mens he was expected to collect. He used to say later that stead of departing on the expected date, they were held up by the absolute necessity of tidiness in the cramped space of the bad weather for nearly two more months. Forty-five years Beagle helped to give him his methodical habits of work. Finally on December 27, with a favorable wind, the Beagle later Darwin wrote in his Autobiography that “these two lifted anchor. In ten days they were sixteen hundred miles months at Plymouth were the most miserable which I ever southwest of Plymouth. Darwin was dreadfully seasick for spent.” He was gloomy at the thought of leaving his family the first two weeks, as he was to be much of the time they were and friends for so long a time. The weather was miserably at sea for the coming five years. Out of port only three days, depressing. To make matters worse, he suffered from palpita- he wrote that he had often thought he would repent the trip tions of the heart and was convinced that he had heart disease. but had had no idea “with what fervor I should do so.” But, being “resolved to go at all hazards,” he carefully avoided On January 10, in the warmer waters off North Africa, running any risk of having a doctor tell him that he was not Darwin started to drag his specially contrived bag for col- fit for such a trip. lecting small sea animals. For the next four days he was busy In spite of his worries, Darwin was keenly aware both of and excited at the exquisite forms and colors of the organisms. the responsibilities he had and of his own limitations. He used From this time he was always happy, indeed exuberant, so long as he had specimens of any new rock or living thing to this dreary waiting period to study and to try to develop a seri- examine, catalogue, and describe. Exactly one month after ous method of work—something he had never thought about the first examination of his sea animals, he wrote to his father previously. This trip, he believed, would give him a great op- that he thought, if he could judge so soon, that he would “be able to do some original work in Natural History.” His feelings about his first day on land, in the Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa, were recorded in his Diary. He told of how glorious it was to walk on volcanic rock, to England to Brazil 3 hear notes of unknown birds, and to see “new insects fluttering about still newer flowers.” He compared himself with a blind man just given eyes. The next three days seemed infinitely long because he was so constantly engaged with objects of new and vivid interest. His collections increased so fast he became worried lest nobody in England would examine them. His excitement increased until finally he walked ashore at Bahia in Brazil. He wrote, “The mind is a chaos of delight out of which a world of future and more quiet pleasure will CHAPTER ONE arise. I am at present fit only to read Humboldt; he like another sun illumines everything I behold.” He reported too that he had collected such a number of beautiful flowers as to make a florist go wild. To see Brazilian scenery, he said, was like After having been twice driven back by heavy-south- “nothing more nor less than a view in the Arabian Nights.” western gales, Her Majesty’s ship Beagle, a ten-gun brig, Darwin’s most important discovery on this part of his trip under the command of Captain Fitzroy, R.N., sailed was neither in the world of geology nor zoology. It was the from Devonport on the 27th of December 1831. The object of the discovery of his own nature. He had always loved to shoot and expedition was to complete the survey of Patagonia and Tierra collect, but now these activities had a new meaning. Upon del Fuego, commenced under Captain King in 1826 to l830— shooting a large lizard, he noted how pleasant it was to have a to survey the shores of Chile, Peru, and of some islands in the duty to do precisely what had for years given him so much Pacific—and to carry a chain of chronometrical measurements pleasure. round the world. On the 6th of January we reached Teneriffe, This first chapter reveals something of the zest and excite- but were prevented landing, by fears of our bringing the ment of the long, often weary, and ever productive months and cholera: the next morning we saw the sun rise behind the years to come. Chance had chosen him for this trip, but the rugged outline of the Grand Canary Island, and suddenly il- trip was to give him ambition and a determination to find lumine the Peak of Tenerifle, whilst the lower parts were veiled out all that was humanly possible about the earth’s surface in fieecy clouds. This was the first of many delightful days never and all the living things on it. 4 FIGURE 6 The Voyage of the Beagle England to Brazil 7 to be forgotten. On the 16th of January 1832, we anchored bird is a kingfisher (Dacelo Iagoensis), which tamely sits on at Porto Praya, in St. Jago, the chief island of the Cape Verde the branches of the castor-oil plant and thence darts on grass- archipelago. hoppers and lizards. It is brightly colored, but not so beautiful The neighborhood of Porto Praya, viewed from the sea, wears as the European species: in its flight, manners, and place of a desolate aspect. The volcanic fires of a past age and the habitation, which is generally in the driest valley, there is also scorching heat of a tropical sun have in most places rendered a wide difference. the soil unfit for vegetation. The country rises in successive One day two of the officers and myself rode to Ribeira steps of tableland, interspersed with some truncate conical hills, Grande, a village a few miles eastward of Porto Praya. Until and the horizon is bounded by an irregular chain of more we reached the valley of St. Martin, the country presented its lofty mountains. The scene, as beheld through the hazy atmos- usual dull brown appearance; but here a very small rill of phere of this climate, is one of great interest; if, indeed, a water produces a most refreshing margin of luxuriant vege- person fresh from sea, and who has just walked for the first tation. In the course of an hour we arrived at Ribeira Grande, time in a grove of coconut trees, can be a judge of anything but and were surprised at the sight of a large ruined fort and * his own happiness. The island would generally be considered cathedral.