Niles Eldredge - The Darwin Blogs

The Darwin Blogs – July 17, 2006.

The Darwin Exhibition #6. The Voyage of the Beagle, Part 2. Darwin in America.

After many interminable delays, the Beagle finally set sail in the very last days of December, 1831. Darwin had a long standing desire to see the tropics—and at last his dream would soon come true. Earlier, he had thought about mounting an expedition to Tenerife in the Canary Islands, inspired by the writings of Alexander von Humboldt. But Tenerife—scheduled to be the first port of call for the Beagle, was off limits: a cholera outbreak back in England meant that the ship’s crew had to be quarantined for 12 days—too long for the impatient Captain FitzRoy.

Darwin didn’t get his first real glimpse of the tropics until the ship reached Bahia, Brazil in late February, 1832. Darwin was blown away by what he saw: “the mind is a chaos of delight,” he wrote in his Diary of his feelings for this amazing chaotic welter of vegetation, with all of its bird, mammal and insect life, that surrounded him. The Brazilian tropics must have been the original “entangled bank” of Darwin’s last paragraph of the Origin of Species published 27 years later—and it was so utterly typical of this young man to gush his feelings, venting his pleasure, awe and amazement in intuitive, artistic terms—before settling down and coolly analyzing what the natural patterns he saw actually meant. For Darwin was right when he wrote of himself (years later, as an older man, in his Autobiography) that he operated as much on inductive, intuitive principles as he did on deductive, analytic principles. Artists, musicians, and novelists who have seen our exhibition have told me that Darwin succeeds beautifully in capturing the essence of human creativity in general, applying equally well to their world as it does to the world of science. Darwin left behind enough records of his work, including his thoughts, that it is possible to trace step-by-step his creation of what has proven to be one of the most important scientific theories in history.

FitzRoy expected Darwin to spend as much time as possible on land—exploring for economically valuable mineral deposits, as well as satisfying his own interests in natural history. Thus was just as well, as Darwin was seasick virtually everyday he was aboard the Beagle; he could get sick even when the ship was becalmed, or laying up snugly in a secluded port somewhere. So, while the Beagle cruised back and forth, up and down the eastern, and later the western, coastlines of southern South America, Darwin would stay on terra firma, working at whatever came to hand. In one place it would be insects and plants; in another, it was the geology that stood out as most intriguing and important for him to focus on; in still other places, it was the fossils he found; in still others, he focused on the birds and mammals.

The net result of all this work was a prodigious series of contributions to geology, zoology and botany. Though he never discovered any economically valuable mineral deposits, Darwin (1) formulated a new theory of the formation of mountain ranges (he experienced a strong earthquake in Chile in 1835—and realized that the episodic shocks of earthquakes sent mountain ranges up, step by step—the subject of his first formal scientific paper when he arrived back home in London); (2) he realized that if mountains can go up, they can also sink down—a core component of his theory of the formation of oceanic coral atolls and reefs, devised while he was still in the Andes and hadn’t yet seen his first atoll; (3) he discovered many new species of insects, plants, birds, mammals, fishes and marine invertebrates, and both invertebrate and vertebrate fossils, that were subsequently described by experts in an impressive array of monographs published after he arrived home. All this—and evolution too!

By the time he arrived home after nearly five years at sea, Darwin was already known in scientific circles. Some of the specimens he collected early in the voyage had already made it safely home; and his mentor John Stevens Henslow had published excerpts of Darwin’s letters, establishing the young Darwin especially as an important, up-and-coming geologist. He wrote in his Autobiography that while he was on the Beagle enjoying all the hard work, he was also determined to take his place among the ranks of the men of science—and so he must have been pleased, if a bit surprised, that his reputation as an excellent scientist actually preceded his arrival home.

And that’s just the science! Darwin also socialized with expatriate Englishmen, picked up some of the Spanish and Portuguese languages, and made observations on ethnic customs wherever he went. He encountered the fearsome General Juan Manuel de Rosas, who was leading his forces against the Indian groups of Patagonia—and experienced an early version of the bloody wars that lay ahead as Europeans pushed westward over the North American continent decades later. Darwin saw many gruesome sights—whole native villages destroyed, their inhabitants slaughtered; and the same sort of thing at some of the army outposts which were to serve as his safety places to spend the night as he gingerly picked his way through the battle zones.

And he saw slavery. Darwin grew up in a liberal, anti-slavery family. His grandfather Josiah Wedgwood had produced a famous cameo depicting an African man, with the words “Am I not a man and a brother?” Darwin had been appalled when he witnessed a slave-holding farmer in Brazil threatening to separate enslaved mothers and fathers—and parents from children—in a fit of rage at his overseer. And his most famous tiff with Captain FitzRoy was also over slavery: FitzRoy told Darwin that Brazilian slaves were happy with their lot—for he had heard some slaves say that they preferred slavery to freedom. Darwin replied that of course they would say that—when the person asking them the question was their master! FitzRoy refused to let Darwin dine with him after that—but relented after a few days when he had calmed down.

It was impossible, of course, to fit five such fraught years—with all the science, all the drama, all the action—as a linear historical narrative into a single exhibition space devoted to Darwin’s entire life and work—and to modern evolutionary biology as well. Instead, we designed a circular room with blue walls—suggesting a sea voyage around the world. You can hear the cries of birds, the creak of ship’s planks and hawsers, and waves, as you stand in front of the first main Beagle voyage display—anachronistically devoted to some of the most iconic elements of the Galapagos fauna and flora. The whole point is to recreate a sense of awe and wonder—like Darwin’s mind afire with “chaos and delight” when he first glimpsed the tropics. Darwin himself melts away, as it is the visitor who is now confronting the very things that Darwin saw. The point of this initial experience is for the visitor to wonder how anyone not armed with today’s binoculars and field guides could possibly make any sense of all these unexpected natural treasures—the marine iguanas, the terrestrial iguanas, the blue-footed boobies, the sally lightfoot crabs, the tree-like cactus, etc etc. We tell stories of Darwin’s encounters with these animals to catch the essence of his experiences out there in a world so little studied before his arrival.

We also show portions of the Beagle’s log book, letters between Darwin and friends and relatives back home, and some of the actual specimens—fossils, insects—that Darwin himself collected while on the voyage. We included a live green iguana and some big-mouthed frogs to pique visitor curiosity about the wildlife of South America. And we include displays on Darwin’s geological work—including his theory of mountain building and coral reef and atoll formation.

But most of all, in our exploration of the Beagle journey, we present the three “clues”—patterns in nature—that led Darwin eventually to embrace the idea of evolution. We’ll delve into these clues in the next blog!

Niles Eldredge

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