More than 175 years after Charles Darwin made his famous voyage on the sailing ship the Beagle, his travelogue is being reissued. Many of his special observations are depicted in this fully illustrated version. This way you can see for yourself where Darwin got the insights for his famous theory of evolution.
“According to the islanders, these animals are deadly deaf,” Darwin wrote in September 1835 in his travel notes about the Galapagos giant tortoise when it landed in the Galapagos archipelago off Ecuador. "At least it's a fact that they don't hear you if you walk right behind them. I always laughed when I walked behind one of these great monsters as he quietly went on his way, and then suddenly, the moment I passed, it pulled its head and paws in and dropped to the ground with a loud hiss, as if he were dead. I would often climb on his back and if I gave a few good taps on the back of the shield, he would get up and walk on. However, it was very difficult not to fall off.”
In addition to all his research and observations, Charles Darwin still had plenty of time for entertainment, according to his account of the journey he made with the Beagle. During the journey of almost five years (1831-1836) he explored the nature of different parts of South America, the Cape Verde Islands, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, the Cocos Islands and Mauritius. During those five years, Darwin spent three years and three months on an expedition in the countries he visited and spent eighteen months aboard the Beagle.
Dumb and slow
In 1839 his travelogue was published under the title Journal and remarks. It was a detailed account of all his biological, geological and anthropological fieldwork. In 1845 a revised edition was published under the title The voyage of the Beagle. By then, Darwin had been able to peruse his vast collection of collected species and his ideas about the theory of evolution were already beginning to take shape. The theory explains the diversity of species on Earth and how heredity can change over generations through variations in heredity and natural selection. The version of Darwin's travelogue from 1845 has now been republished in Dutch.
In addition to Darwin's account, it contains fragments from Captain Fitz-Roy's travelogue and from Darwin's world-famous work 'The Origin of Species'. Moreover, it is fully illustrated, which gives the reader a good impression of all the areas Darwin writes about. The addition of the photos and illustrations make it a wonderful (coffee table) book. The fragments of Captain Fitz-Roy do not always add as much, the pieces from Darwin's other work, on the other hand, do. It is nice to see where the observations from a certain area have ultimately led.
And those observations are wonderfully dry and not always scientifically sound. This is how Darwin's own opinion shines through nicely. Of the marine iguana that inhabits the waters of the Galapagos Islands, he writes:"They occur in large numbers on all islands, but only along rocky coasts and beaches. Never saw one even ten meters inland. The animal has a repulsive appearance, is dirty black, stupid and moves slowly.'
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In the chapter on the Galapagos Islands you can also clearly see the first crossroads for his groundbreaking theory. He notices that the different islands are largely inhabited by different species. The Vice-Governor of the Islands, Mr. Lawson, pointed this out to him first and was able to tell him effortlessly which island a turtle came from. Darwin writes how he initially did not consider this remark and had already mixed up his collection of organisms from the two islands:'I had not considered for a moment that islands that were only fifty or sixty miles apart, and that often sight, and made up of exactly the same kinds of rock, and had exactly the same climate, and were all about the same height, yet had different kinds of animals. However, we will soon see that this is the case.”
Based on the great depth of the sea between the islands and the recent volcanic origin, Darwin concludes that the islands were never connected. He finds it all the more striking that species occur on the different islands, which, although they are very similar, are all slightly different. He does not yet speak of evolution but of 'creative energy':'When we consider all this, we are amazed at the enormous creative energy, if I may say so, which we witness on these small, dry and rocky islands. Even greater is our astonishment at the different but analogous ways in which this creative energy has been expressed in so closely spaced places.”
This new edition of Darwin's travelogue is a beautiful book that should certainly not be missing in a biologist's cupboard, but is also a great gift for anyone who loves nature.
In Darwin's wake
In 2009 and 2010, the VPRO followed the Beagle, together with various scientists. An adventurous expedition that mainly looked at changes on earth and sought an answer to the question of how our planet really stands. Is man in the process of destroying life on Earth, or is this greatly exaggerated? As Darwin pondered over the origin of the species, the creators of Beagle, in Darwin's wake, pondered its future. Watch the episodes here.