Charles Darwin* Read Online Free PDF

twenty-six-year-old Robert FitzRoy. It was an English custom to take a naturalist along on such trips for information gathering. Basically, FitzRoy was looking for a nice guy, someone easy to be around, a cultured gentleman he could talk to as an equal at meals. The previous captain of the Beagle , overwhelmed by responsibilities and with no real peer to talk to, had shot himself. Intensely ambitious, conscientious about every detail, FitzRoy wanted to avoid conditions that could lead to this fate. He was interested in science himself, especially astronomy and meteorology, and had bought six of the ship’s twenty-two chronometers (for determining longitude) with his own money.
    The two men met and liked each other, though the captain worried about Darwin’s nose. A believer in the pseudoscience of phrenology—analyzing personality from a person’s features and the bumps on his skull—he didn’t think Darwin’s nose showed enough stamina to withstand the rigors of this voyage. Still, traveling with the grandson of Erasmus Darwin sounded very cool. Darwin was able to persuade him that his “nose had spoken falsely.”
    So the deal was on. Darwin promptly set about meeting with London naturalists for advice on what and how to collect, spending quality time with Ras, advising the sisterhood on packing up his things and labeling his shirts with his name. “I am as happy as a king,” he wrote. Besides materials for collecting and preserving specimens, a portable dissecting microscope, and other high-tech gadgets, he packed a Bible, John Milton’s epic religious poem Paradise Lost , his own copy of Humboldt’s Personal Narrative (a gift from Henslow), and Principles of Geology , volume one, by lawyer-turned-geologist Charles Lyell (a gift from FitzRoy).
    Alas, FitzRoy’s meticulous preparations, then several winter storms, delayed the trip for several months. Discouraged, Darwin spent his time in Plymouth, fearing he’d made a big mistake. He developed a rash on his face and pains in his chest, but he refused to visit a doctor for fear of being told he couldn’t go.
    Finally, on December 27, 1831, the voyage got off to a sickening start. This was not a cruise ship. Darwin had a tiny cabin under the poop deck, which he shared with two roommates, a fourteen-year-old midshipman and a nineteen-year-old survey officer. To sleep in his hammock each night he had to pull a drawer out of the wall so his feet could tuck in. Darwin was seasick beyond belief. He spent the first several days vomiting nonstop, eating only raisins. The misery was “far far beyond what I ever guessed at.”
    And then there was the harsh treatment of the crew. With seventy-four men under his command, mostly younger than he was, FitzRoy was paranoid about establishing discipline immediately. He ordered twenty-five to forty-five lashes given to any sailor guilty of drunkenness, disobeying orders, or neglecting his duties. Darwin was horrified by the cruelty and the nightmarish screams of men being whipped. He felt like he was in hell. His distress was obvious to FitzRoy, who assumed Darwin would be leaving the ship at the first port.
    But soon enough, he was being soothed by nature—the brightly colored fish jumping around the bow of the ship, the warm breezes, a storm of butterflies. He began lowering gauze nets, thrilled at the intricate sea creatures—the plankton and jellyfish—he was catching. These tiny, simple forms of life never ceased to amaze him—“that so much beauty should be apparently created for such little purpose.”

    He started keeping a journal for the first time, training himself in the discipline of putting his thoughts into words on paper, developing his powers of observation, learning how to write in a clear, unpretentious style. In three weeks the ship reached St. Jago in the Cape Verde Islands, 450 miles off the African coast. Darwin eagerly rushed ashore to investigate. The dense green jungle, with its palm trees, orange