The Voyage of the Beagle: Charles Darwin s Journal of Researches (Penguin Classics) 
Product Description: - This richly readable book is the product of Charles Darwin s amazing journey aboard the Beagle where he made observations that led to his revolutionary theory of natural selection.
Customer Ratings: - Amazingly EXCITING!!!. I got it and read it in less than a month over Mexico and US while traveling birding.... even big small-letters book, the history and stories of Sir. Darwin in South America are awesome... inspiring!!....
a must read book!!!...
saludos,
Diego
www.colombiabirding.com - An incredible adventure and a most enjoyable read. One of the amazing things about the voyage of the Beagle is that Darwin survived it! On the voyage south along the eastern coast of South America and then later on the western coast he would frequently take to the land and meet the Beagle at its next port of call further south or north. He would travel the land hiring gauchos or other guides and horses and mules so that he could study the geology and the flora and fauna. The hardships and dangers he encountered and survived would in some ways put Indiana Jones to shame. In Patagonia amidst the constant gaucho and Indian wars, rife with wanton bloodshed and a kind of genocidal determinism, Darwin rode on horseback and slept on the ground and ate mostly animal flesh of all kinds, including mare s flesh. In Tierra del Fuego the cold and barren lands were enormously forbidding, the inhabitants savage and the dangers very real. One senses in the young Charles Darwin a determination to be the kind of naturalist who leaves no stone unturned, no ridge unclimbed and no species uncollected.
What most surprised me was how well and vibrantly he described the many people he met. Here he speaks of the governor of St. Fe: his favourite occupation is hunting Indians: a short time since he slaughtered forty-eight, and sold the children at the rate of three or four pounds apiece (from the entry of Oct 3 and 4, 1832). And here is his description of Queen Pomarre of Tahiti: The queen is a large awkward woman, without any beauty, grace or dignity. She has only one royal attribute: a perfect immovability of expression under all circumstances (entry of November 25, 1835). Darwin was quite taken with the Tahitians lauding their sobriety (thanks to the temperance movement of the missionaries) while at the same time bringing a flask of spirits on his travels there. He seemed unaware of any inconsistency.
I was also surprised by Darwin s vigor. I had thought that he was prone to being sickly, and indeed at times, he reports that he was confined to his quarters and that he suffered from seasickness and even homesickness, but when one considers all the miles he travelled on foot, on horseback, and all the mountain peaks he obtained, and the deserts he crossed, the many insects bites he endured, and the hard, cold and wet ground on which he often slept, one has to applaud his strength of body and character. Another surprise was the amount of time he devoted to geology and speculations about the how the land came to be the way he found it. When he spoke of how the land had risen and the mountains formed I had the sense of how thrilled he would have been to have had the modern understanding of plate tectonics.
At a couple of points in the narrative, Darwin speaks of how the most luxurious vegetation does not support the greatest number of animals, or the largest. He compares the plains of Africa and Patagonia with the Brazilian rainforest and speculates on why this should be. At no point does he use the term grasslands, and so I think we can conclude that he didn t have the knowledge we have today about how fertile grasslands can be, nor did he realize that most of the nutrients in the rain forest are contained within the living plants and organisms above ground leaving the soil relatively poor compared to grassland soil. In the entry for September 15, 1832, he writes: In grassy plains unoccupied by the larger ruminating quadrupeds, it seems necessary to remove the superfluous vegetation by fire, so as to render the new year s growth serviceable.
Another bit of modern knowledge that would have pleased him to know is that the marine iguanas of the Galapagos Islands cannot just jump into the very cold water that exists there but must warm themselves first, and even then can only stand the water for a limited period of time (an hour or two, I believe). Darwin kept tossing one of the lizards into the water only to watch it return inexplicably again and again to the land.
I was looking for hints that Darwin was already thinking about natural selection, but the text contains nothing that I could find that is directly specific although at one point he refers to the origin of species as that mystery of mysteries.
The book was written (and obviously rewritten and polished many times over) after Darwin returned to England after comparing notes with other naturalists. The advantage of this approach is the scientific rigor with which he is able to describe and evaluate his experiences. As a professional scientist, Darwin wanted to get all the scientific names right and avoid errors. One would expect through this approach that some immediacy would be lost, but if anything I suspect his journal gained in vividness and was made all the more intriguing for the precision of expression. It is, after all these years, still a most engaging and readable account of a most remarkable adventure--one of the best I ve ever read, and I am surprised that it took me so many years to get to it!
The Voyage of the Beagle is also a book that will stay in print for many decades if not centuries to come, partly because it is so well written, and partly because Darwin is Darwin, but also because he was so precise in his descriptions of the animals and the people and the lands that he visited. By reading this we and future generations can learn of the changes that have taken place.
In short I was thoroughly dazzled at Darwin s enormously wide range of knowledge. But I shouldn t have been. In just reading this journal, one can easily see that young Mr. Darwin was already a superb naturalist and a brilliant thinker and observer.
- One of the best travel books written by one of the best scientists. Forget the image of Darwin as an old white-beard scholar. In The Voyage of The Beagle, written in 1839, we have the discoverer of the theory of evolution as an energetic young man in his early twenties travelling aroung the world in a three-mast ship. After a brief stop in Cape Verde, he travels to then slaveholding Brazil (where he visits for the first time a tropical jungle), to the Plata region (he visits both Buenos Aires and Montevideo and travels on horseback on the surroundings), to the Patagonia (where he meets strongman Juan Manuel de Rosas as he launches a campaign against the pampa Indians), the Falkland Islands, Southern Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego (where they bring back three Fuegians previously kidnapped by an earlier expedition), Chile from south to north, the Galapagos Islands (whose findings would be crucial for the theory of evolution), Polynesia, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa. As he travels, he writes about both the natural history of the places as well as the people he meets. He does a lot of fearless things, travelling on horseback around the Pampas then under the dominion of hostile indians, crossing the Andes from Chile to Argentina through some of the world s highest mountains outside the Himalayas, witnessing the life of the now extinguished Fuegians (considered to be among the most primitive societies in the world), crossing the dense, cold forests of the island of Chiloe, witnessing the aboriginal australians as they cope with the massive arrival of white people to their land, seeing the gravestone of Napoleon Bonaparte in the island of Saint Helena. Darwin was no racist and he forcefully denounces the slavery he witnesses in Brazil (in this respect, he was much more thoughtful and liberal than some of his later disciples). In short, one of the greatest travel/adventure books by one of the greatest scientists of all time.
- Another Handy Penguin Edition of Darwin. Much as is the case with the Penguin edition of Darwin s On the Origin of Species, this relatively inexpensive edition is packed with helpful features that add to the reader s understanding of what Darwin was about on his prolonged scientific voyage. First among these features is an excellent introduction by Janet Browne and Michael Neve, both of that wonderful Wellcome Institute in London. Dr. Browne is the author of what many consider to be the finest biography of Darwin ever written, Dr. Neve also has contributed to the Darwin literature. Although 26 pages in length, a bit shorter than that in the Origin edition by J.W. Burrow, this introduction nicely puts the Journal of Researches into context, while pointing out several areas that are of special interest to the reader. While the text is abridged about 1/3 in length, a Note carefully explains how and why the deletions were made. For example, nothing relating to the Galapagos has been cut. The editors have added a brief guide to the individuals and books mentioned in the text which is quite helpful. Also added as appendices are the Admiralty Instructions for the Beagle voyage and an essay by Captain Robert FitzRoy on Remarks with reference to the Deluge, reflecting his reversion to traditional Christian thinking during the voyage. Several very helpful maps and a chronology are also included, which come in quite handy. Obviously, it is of immeasurable value to read the Journal of Researches in conjunction wit the Origin. One comes away truly amazed at the dedication and professionalism of Darwin (who was only 22 when he commenced his five year excursion) as he collects his speciments and charts various geological dimensions. So, this book is to my way of thinking indispensable for getting a grasp on Darwin, and this skillfully edited edition makes the experience a most pleasing one.
- For the Serious Darwin Fan Only. Darwin s Voyage of the Beagle is an interesting, but often tedious detail of his journey around the world. With this in mind, I would have to recommend this book to the Darwin enthusiast and to those who are just looking for a deeper grasp of Darwin, the man. It s not for anyone looking for a quick, easy, or particularly exciting or sensationalist read. If that s what you re looking for, I recommend Cyril Aydon s biography.
With this disclaimer, the book really does offer insight into Darwin and why this journey would be such a critical point in his life. Darwin is incredibly observant, and details flora and fauna throughout with sometimes discouraging detail. But this fact just gives us a clue as to what made this man different from all the other preeminent scientists of the day. Why did Darwin fully get evolution while the others didn t? Certainly this incredible power to really see things provided him with evidence that others might have missed.
My favorite parts would have to be Darwin s description of his time in the inside of South America and his interactions with the people living there. His reactions were varied. He often voices disgust at the barbarism of the settlers towards the Indians in the wars that occur there, while simultaneously describing the Indians as savages with terrible habits. Overall, however, he seems impressed with South America from the classical liberal point of view, saying It is impossible to doubt that the extreme liberalism of these countries, must ultimately lead to good results. It would be interesting to see what Darwin would think of South America today. Throughout the book he adamately denounces the slavery sees with a keen insight, saying of an escaped slave woman who killed herself rather than be reenslaved, In a Roman matron this would have been called the noble love of freedom: in a poor negress it is mere brutal obstinancy. Darwin was ahead of his time in this respect.
The part of the book covering his time in the Galapagos is surprisingly short, at least in respect to the emphasis Darwin later put on his time in the islands. It s also interesting to consider Darwin s reaction to them (he thought they were ugly and barren) when considering the impact the diversity of species on the islands played in his evidence for evolution.
All in all, the book has really good, insightful things to pick up, but other parts, such as Darwin s lengthy description of the masses of tiny floating sea creatures, I could have done without. Pick it up if you are really looking to put together a really complete picture of Darwin s life, with tedious details included.
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The Voyage of the Beagle: Charles Darwin s Journal of Researches (Penguin Classics) (ID: 014043268X)
