Darwin's Dog-Leg: the Last Stage of Darwi:'Nt Weesh Feeld Trip of 1831
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,-, t^ ln | + i :,\ !;'iqri^,46: Archivesof NaruralHisro4'{ 1998) 25 ( I t: 59-73 Darwin'sdog-leg: the last stage of Darwi:'ntWeEsh fEeld trip of 1831 By MICHAEL B. ROBERTS Chirk Vicarage, Trevor Road, chtuk, WrecsamLL14 5HD. l "At Capel Curig I left Sedgwick and went in a straight line by compassand map acrossthe mountainsto Barmouth,never following any track unlessit coincided with my course.I thus came to some strangewild placesand enjoyed much this mannerof travelling. I visited Barmouth to seemore Cambridgefriends who were reading there, and thence returned to Shrewsburyand to Maer for shooting;" (Darwin and Huxley, 1983:40). Darwin's reminiscencesabout the last part of his field trip of 1831 have passedinto Danvinian folklore. It soundsromantic and heroic that the young geologist should, in a style wo-rthy of Orde Wingate, simply take a compassbearing from Capel Curig and then do up hill and down dale until he reachedBarmouth. On 5 August 1831 Darwin had left Shrewsburywith Adam Sedgwick,visiting first Llangollen, then the Vale of Clwyd and finally the country south and west of Conwy. After a week Sedgwick went to Holyhead and then to Ireland leaving Darwin to find his own way home, by following a compassbearing to his old hauntsat Barmouth (seeFigure i). 3 In fact, Darwin's Autqpiograplry is faulty on severalpoints. From a consideration of letters sent by Sedgwick to Darwin in September1831 and the first notes Darwin made on Quail Island in January 1832,Darwin and Sedgwickleft PenrhynQuarry on 11 August and journeyed across Angelsey together and separatedsometime before Sedgwick set sail from Holyhead on 13 August and not at Capel Curig as claimed in his Autobiography (Darwin and Huxley, 1983: 40). Darwin first visited Cwm Idwal on his own, and spent two nights at Capel Curig, before heading south to Barmouth (see.Figures1 and 2). The conventionalpicture that Darwin followed a compassbearing appearsin most biographies,but is highly unlikely when one considersthe nature of the terrain, even without consideringhis geological notes or letters from Sedgwick. A route following a bearing from Capel Curig to Barmouth is 27 miles over difficult terrain, involving 2,500 metres (8,000 feet) of ascent. Spread over two days this would be a good undertaking,but Barrett's (1974: 152) suggestionthat "Darwin probably walked it in one day" is simply absurd. A fairly direct route along the Moelwynion skyline for the first stageto Maentwrog over Moel Siabod and then the Moelwynion would give a fairly energetic hillwalk of 14 miles over grassy mountains.However, if Darwin was "never following any track unlessit coincided with my course", he would have had an exhaustingday ploughing his way through bogs and coarsegrass as well as ascendingsome 1,400 metres. A fit young person would need 6 hours for the ridge- F o\ 20 Ko Y I l2 Ch€rtcr a -l |rl r €U) F-.1 tn v) Fi w { Ll|nynynrc,b t d (July t83l) m r a Dobc[!u - m I&ir ncl *l E Figure 1. The route of Darwin's field nip in August 1831. a! [The numbers(5-17) refer to datesin August as in the chronologyofAppendix l.] 6 ,J {$9Lbs"t a$ $ta\K Ir\a1(1ng Ttre ( treK - 1$d' de''l' lluhlin , (13,14) lbergele[8) GefnGaves I a iis o! Qr Henslow(Anglesey) Ffestiniog (5) ) o"# Uangollen oldRed 8s (221 Greenough(Mainland) \ --o[ i ( Sandstone qEl sl Devonian ) sl Darwin's'proven'route f$ rd -- Sedgwick'sroute, probably with Darwin Uanymynech. ta 01311 --l Sedgwick'sroute while Danruin on traverse $hrewsbury(3,4) T1-T3 Darwin'straverses under Sedgwick O (22) Wherenights were spent (Date in August) I ostipenstones TI.IELAST STAGES OF DARWIN'S WELSH FIELD TRIP OF 1831 6I v"al}.:and \\rell over 8 for tire compassroute excludinethe severalhours neededfor makingnotes. The secondstage to Barmouthover the Rhinog mountainswould give a 20-mile trek over the roughestterrain in Wales.Although the highestpoint is Y Llethr at 754 metres,their lack of height is deceptive.The northernRhinogs are even today almost devoid of north-south paths and consist largely of boulders covered in 2-foot high heather.As John and Ann Nuttall (1989: 151, i56) write in their walking guide to Wales, "The northem Rhinogs presentsome of the roughestand toughestwalking to be found anywhere in Wales", in which "the resulting successionof alternating ascentsand descentsreduces progress to a crawl". This is no exaggerationas anyone who has walked in the Rhinogs can testify. Today a "skyline" walk from Maentwrog to Barmouth would take at least 10 hours following poor footpaths.but a yomp on a bearing would give an exceedinglylong and exhaustingday. Darwin was well used to long walks in North Wales as his 1826 walking tour testifies,but direct routes in this terrain would require a perversity only exceededby Orde Wingate in Fthiopia during the Second World War where he insisted on marching a compassbearing through bamboo jungle and lava fields, thus gaining scathing condemnationfrom Wilfred Thesiger (1987: 327). Claims of walking 30 miles a day in Snowdonia in 1826 notwithstanding (Darwin and Huxley, 1983: 29), Darwin's statementsin his Autobiograpftymust be seenas a faulty memory some50 years on. The reasonsfor a less direct route are even clearer when one considersDarwin's 1831 notes and identi- fies the.4rreciselocation of the outcropsdescribed. From these and a considerationof the topographyand with referenceto both ancient and modern maps the route taken by Darwin in 1831 can be worked out with a high degreeof probability and much of , it with certainty. Since moving to Chirk, in the crypt of whose church lies Fanny -zMostyn Owen, who sent Darwin severallove lettersin 1828 and "aleetle purse... In remembranceof the housemaidof the Black Forest" in October 1831 (Burkhardt and Smith, 1985: 166 & passim), I have walked, cycled and driven extensively in North Wales, and aniqthusfamiliar with the topographyhaving "climbed every moun- tain" from Conwy to Barmouth severaltimes, and have followed the entire length of Darwin's route, mostly on foot, but also by car and bicycle. Darwin recorded his notes for the 1831 field trip in a quarto notebook, taking 20 surviving pages of notes,beginning at Valle Crucis (Vale of Crucis) near Llangollen. Dates are given only up to 8 August, but datescan be worked out by comparisonwith Sedgwick's dated notes up to the time they visited Penrhyn Quany on 11 August. After PenrhynQuarry Sedgwick'sand Darwin's notescannot be correlatedat all, thus it would be reasonableto conclude that they separatedat that point. However, when describingthe conglomeratesat Quail Island in the Cape Verde Islands on 17 and i8 January 1832-the first fieldwork of the Beagle voyage-Darwin comparedthem to "red-sandstoneformation Anglesey". Sedgwick recorded some Old Red Sandstone northwest of Llangefni in his notes for 12 August and thus Darwin travelled at least as far as that with Sedgwick. Most probably Darwin left Sedgwick the following morning at Holyhead and returned to Bethesda,presumably by stage coach which would have carried Darwin to Bethesdaor Ogwen, a mile below Cwm Idwal, in a few hours. Further, Darwin's notes are not continuousas immediately after his notes on Penrhyn Quarry there is clear evidence that one page has been removed.' a4 62 THELAST STAGES oF DARwTN'swELSH FIELD TRIp oF 1831 Presurnablythe excisedpage contained Darwin's notesof Angelsey.After Darwin left Sedgwickno datesare given in Darwin's notesand outcroplocalities are not always given precisely.The dates and route Darwin took can be worked out with fair accu- racy, by comparinghis notes with the local geology and the topography.After Capel Curig Darwin made notes at some ten localities. In his notes some are underlined, and several have different spellings from today's conventions. Simply by plotting theselocalities on the map (Figure 2) it is very clear that Darwin did not take a com- pass direction of 190 deg., but took a fairly direct route in the form of a dog-leg avoiding high ground. Several localities can be obviously identified, interpreting Darwin's odd Welsh spelling, e.g. Moel Siabod (Shiabred),Dolwyddelan, Carreg y Fran, Festineog, and Drus Ardidy. The localities of Darwin's Moelwyn, Northern Moelwyn and Pont Cwmnantcol,i.e. W end of valley below Drus Ardidy are identified on severallines of evidenceput forward below.' DARWIN'S ROUTE FROM CAPEL CURIG TO BARMOUTH Darwin gave little indication in his notes of the route he followed. Though he did not mention the inn he stayedat in Capel Curig, the most likely place is what is now the mountain centre at Plas Y Brenin (lit. King's Mansion), which in the early nineteenth century was known as the Royal Hotel. This was a large coachinginn and during the last century had extensive stabling facilities. It is almost certainly the inn where Sedgwick stayedin September1831, finding a letter waiting for him from Darwin. In Sedgwick's reply he referred to "the road turning off (the turnpike) to the Inn".3 Darwin probably stayedhere in 1826 and returnedhere in 1842 on his glaciation trip. The inn is given a fine descriptionin GeorgeBorow's (1905: I78) WiId Wales. There are two possibilitiesfor Darwin's journey on leaving Capel Curig. The first is that he w'bnt up Moel Siabod en route to Dolwyddelan. If so, then having left the Inn, Darwin followed a line direct to the top of Moel Siabod, which was probably close to the present path from Plas y Brenin. As the next identifiable outcrop describedwas the Dolwyddelan quarries(GR 74352I), Darwin simply descendedthe broken ground from the summit of Moel Siabod to the village. As paths are not clearly visible even today Darwin proceededin a south-south-easterlydirection.