The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

CHARLES DARWIN

The Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle

I.—To the South American Coast

The "Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle Round the World" was Darwin's first popular contribution to travel and science. His original journal of the part he took in the expedition, as naturalist of the surveying ships Adventure and Beagle, was published, together with the official narratives of Captains Fitzroy and King, a year after the return of the latter vessel to England in October, 1836. It was not till 1845 that Darwin issued his independent book, of which the following is an epitome, written from the notes in his journal. It immediately attracted considerable popular and scientific attention, and many editions and cheap reprints have been issued during the past half century. It is said that Darwin at first considered himself more as a collector than as a scientific worker; but experience soon brought to him the keen enjoyment of the original investigator. The most striking feature of the book is the combined minuteness and breadth of his observations and descriptions. There can be no doubt that it was the gathered results of his discoveries, and the study of his collected specimens of the zoology, botany, and geology of the countries visited; his graphic presentation of their physical geography; and their synthetic analysis, which laid the foundations of his great generalisations of the "Origin of Species." (See Science.)

After having been twice driven back by heavy south-west gales, H.M.S. Beagle, a ten-gun brig, under the command of Captain Fitzroy, R.N., sailed from Devonport on December 27, 1831. The object of the expedition was to complete the survey of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, commenced under Captain King in 1826-30; to survey the shores of Chile, Peru, and of some of the islands in the Pacific; and to carry a chain of chronometrical measurements round the world.

On January 16, 1832, we touched at Porto Praya, St. Jago, in the Cape de Verde archipelago, and sailed thence to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Delight is a weak term to express the higher feelings of wonder, astonishment, and devotion which fill the mind of a naturalist in wandering through the Brazilian tropical forest. The noise from the insects is so loud that it may be heard at sea several hundred yards from the shore, yet within the recesses of the forest a universal silence seems to reign. The wonderful and beautiful flowering parasites invariably struck me as the most novel object in these grand scenes. Among the cabbage-palms, waving their elegant heads fifty feet from the ground, were woody creepers, two feet in circumference, themselves covered by other creepers.

The humming birds are fond of shady spots, and these little creatures, with their brilliant plumage, buzzing round the flowers with wings vibrating so rapidly as scarcely to be visible, seek the tiny insects in the calyx rather than the fabled honey. Insects are particularly numerous, the bees excepted. The Beagle was employed surveying the extreme southern and eastern coasts of America south of the Plata during the two succeeding years. The almost entire absence of trees in the pampas of Uruguay, the provinces of Buenos Ayres [now Argentina], and Patagonia is remarkable.

Fifteen miles from the Rio Negro, the principal river on the whole line of coast between the Strait of Magellan and the Plata, are several shallow lakes of brine in winter, which in summer are converted into fields of snow-white salt two and a half miles long and one broad. The border of the lakes is formed of mud, which is thrown up by a kind of worm. How surprising it is that any creature should be able to exist in brine, and that they should be crawling among crystals of sulphate of soda and lime!

The valley of the Rio Negro, broad as it is, has merely been excavated out of the sandstone plain; and everywhere the landscape wears the same sterile aspect.