A591    Pamphlet:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Charles Darwin's last island: Terceira, Azores, 1836. Geowest no. 27.   Text   Image

Chapter 1 Darwin's Azores Experience Darwin seems to have been looking forward to his visit to the Azores. In his hastily scribbled last letter from the Beagle to his family in Shrewsbury, from Bahia, Brazil, and dated 4 August 1836 he wrote: We go from here to the C. de Verds, that is if the winds or the Equatorial calms will allow us.- I have some faint hopes, that a steady foul wind might induce the Captain to proceed direct to the Azores.- For which most untoward event I heartily pray.1

F3705    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Darwin's desolate islands: A naturalist in the Falklands, 1833 and 1834. Chippenham: Picton Publishing.   Text

Introduction Charles Darwin's two sojourns in the Falkland Islands, in March April 1833 and March April 1834, have received scant attention in comparison with the detailed discussion that has been accorded certain other sections of the Beagle voyage, particularly the visit to the Galapagos Islands (September October 1835) and those visits associated with the development of the Coral Atoll Theory during the crossing of the Pacific and Indian Oceans (November 1835 May 1836). Richard Grove, in

F3705    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Darwin's desolate islands: A naturalist in the Falklands, 1833 and 1834. Chippenham: Picton Publishing.   Text

intended for Darwin's book: The Geology of the Voyage of the Beagle: Pt 3, Observations on the Geology of South America, but omitted when the book was published in 1846. Darwin in fact published a short article including material from these earlier manuscripts in the Proceedings of the Geological Society in 1846. This paper also included observations sent by Lieutenant B J Sulivan (Darwin's shipmate on the 1831 36 voyage, and a lifelong friend and correspondent) based on a subsequent period of work

F3705    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Darwin's desolate islands: A naturalist in the Falklands, 1833 and 1834. Chippenham: Picton Publishing.   Text

diary and letters occasionally betray his lively interest in his companions aboard the Beagle. He was also as capable as anyone of forming warm relationships. Although he does not seem to have met Midshipman Philip Gidley King, after the latter left the Beagle at Sydney in January 1836 (to go to live with his father, Philip Parker King), they corresponded fondly about their days of friendship aboard ship, looking back nostalgically to the evenings on deck when they had a yarn together

F3705    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Darwin's desolate islands: A naturalist in the Falklands, 1833 and 1834. Chippenham: Picton Publishing.   Text

was murdered by villains, because he defended the property of his friend: he was mangled by them to satisfy their hellish spite: dragged by a lasso, at a horse's heels, away from the houses, and left to be eaten by dogs. It may safely be assumed that FitzRoy saw to it that Brisbane's grave was put in neat order.3 This was not the last disagreeable task that the crew of the Beagle had to tackle before leaving the islands. While the ship was preparing to put to sea, the body of Lieutenant Clive

F3705    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Darwin's desolate islands: A naturalist in the Falklands, 1833 and 1834. Chippenham: Picton Publishing.   Text

the Beagle. Although no evolutionary significance was attached to the note at the time, it is interesting that even at this early point in his career Darwin was fascinated by the fecundity of organisms, and appreciated how important was the fact of the destruction of enormous numbers of organisms before adulthood. Twenty-six years prior to the publication of On the Origin of Species, the young naturalist is already but a few short steps from the notion of natural selection. Another observation

A589    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Darwin's desolate islands: A naturalist in the Falklands, 1833 and 1834. Chippenham: Picton Publishing.   Text   PDF

PLATE XXIV Figure 1.1. Plate from the Zoology of the Beagle, Part IV, showing Aplochiton zebra, a fish caught in the Falklands (the lower fish was caught at Tierra del Fuego). of the Falkland trout, the well-known endemic freshwater fish the islands (caught in a freshwater lake ), see Fig 1.1. Also in the Natural History Museum are two skins of the Falklands fox6 donated by FitzRoy, and several skulls of this species. Numerous rock specimens were collected (now in the Department of Earth

A589    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Darwin's desolate islands: A naturalist in the Falklands, 1833 and 1834. Chippenham: Picton Publishing.   Text   PDF

commonalty of the direction of these phenomena with the grain of the topography of the islands. In a set of notes on the subject of cleavage (DAR41 Cleavage Notes/16), dating from the Beagle [page] 6

A589    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Darwin's desolate islands: A naturalist in the Falklands, 1833 and 1834. Chippenham: Picton Publishing.   Text   PDF

had been his failure to identify the exact island from which his various Galapagos specimens had come. Frank Sulloway (1984) suggests: Darwin subsequently sought to rectify his failure to label his own Galapagos finch specimens by island, by collecting every scrap of available locality information from the accurately labelled collections of three other Beagle shipmates, including that of his own servant [Syms Covington]. He wrote one request for information on a scrap of paper still held in the

A591    Pamphlet:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Charles Darwin's last island: Terceira, Azores, 1836. Geowest no. 27.   Text   Image

Charles Darwin visited many islands and archipelagoes during the voyage of the Beagle around the world during the years 1831-1836. Although the visit to the Galapagos Islands off South America is the best known of these visits, the young naturalist's sojourns at a number of these tiny spechs of land had important influences on his development. Terceira on the Azores was the last of these, and although there are signs that he was getting tired of journeying, he was in many ways observing

F3705    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Darwin's desolate islands: A naturalist in the Falklands, 1833 and 1834. Chippenham: Picton Publishing.   Text

Figure 3.2. The country is uniformly the same; an undulating moorland, the surface covered with light brown grass growing out of a peaty soil. Photograph: Patrick Armstrong. the Beagle was moored nearby, and it must have been from the settlement that the gaucho companions were recruited and the horses were hired. From there the riders would have been able to get on pretty well as Darwin put it, over the low col of Green Hill, proceeding almost directly south. To the west were the tributary

F3705    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Darwin's desolate islands: A naturalist in the Falklands, 1833 and 1834. Chippenham: Picton Publishing.   Text

Figure 5.2. The extinct Falkland fox or warrah, from an illustration in The Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle. interested in collecting material for a possible contribution to a continental extension/dispersal debate, than that he was seriously entertaining evolutionary ideas in the southern hemisphere autumn in 1833. Darwin had already spent several months on the mainland of South America and around Tierra del Fuego and his notes are replete with comparisons between these areas and the

A591    Pamphlet:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Charles Darwin's last island: Terceira, Azores, 1836. Geowest no. 27.   Text   Image

Terceira were familiar species from Britain. But maybe he was just impatient to be home, and this impatience was aggravated by the very familiarity of some aspects of the environment. This last point will be returned to later. I have emphasised elsewhere the importance of Darwin's comparative turn of mind. The comparative approach that was so important in his later work on evolution was already well-developed in his days aboard the Beagle. He was constantly, in his notes, comparing his own

A591    Pamphlet:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Charles Darwin's last island: Terceira, Azores, 1836. Geowest no. 27.   Text   Image

of days before. This admittedly makes a round trip of nearly 50km (some 30 miles), including stiff country and with indifferent weather; he also stopped occasionally to make observations. To complete this trip by between 3.00 and 4.00pm (the ship weighed and made sail at 4.20pm according to the log, and horses had to be returned, the guides paid off, and the ship's boat to convey him to the Beagle) would have been an undertaking, but not impossible. We must indeed assume an early start (perhaps

A591    Pamphlet:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Charles Darwin's last island: Terceira, Azores, 1836. Geowest no. 27.   Text   Image

character the trachyte of Ascension This formation is in many parts overlaid, in the usual order of superposition, by streams of basaltic lava, which near the coast compose nearly the whole surface. While still aboard the Beagle he wrote in his notes of the Terceira trachytes: These lava appeared the most ancient; their circumstances present the old case of the Trachytic nucleus enveloped by more recent streams of a more basaltic nature. (DAR 38.2/957) To some extent these conclusions were

F3705    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Darwin's desolate islands: A naturalist in the Falklands, 1833 and 1834. Chippenham: Picton Publishing.   Text

some of Darwin's Beagle letters, Sulloway13 attempted to show how Darwin's morale and self-assurance fluctuated in part according to the work that he was doing. An extreme example of this type of study is a very recent Charles Darwin: a New Biography by psychiatrist John Bowlby.14 Dr Bowlby attempts to show that the illnesses that Darwin experienced for much of his life were psychosomatic, and can be related to his experiences in childhood, and subsequent bereavements and the stresses of his

A589    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Darwin's desolate islands: A naturalist in the Falklands, 1833 and 1834. Chippenham: Picton Publishing.   Text   PDF

Beagle, and Captain FitzRoy's account. I also used modern topographic maps to locate sites that he examined or from which he collected specimens. Where possible, I have photographed some of these sites. My field visits are always preceded and followed by intensive work on all available archival and published sources bearing on a locality. Sometimes letters and annotations from much later in Darwin's life throw light on his observations and thoughts during earlier [page]

A589    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Darwin's desolate islands: A naturalist in the Falklands, 1833 and 1834. Chippenham: Picton Publishing.   Text   PDF

anchor came to rest on a shingle bottom, and the top gallant mast was struck. The weather seems to have deteriorated as the evening wore on, and was described in the ship's log as cloudy, overcast and gloomy. Around midnight and in the early morning there were further showers. Meanwhile Captain FitzRoy, Commander of HMS Beagle, lost no time in making enquiries about conditions ashore: for seeing a French flag flying near some tents behind Johnson Cove or Harbour, and knowing that in 1831, the

A589    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Darwin's desolate islands: A naturalist in the Falklands, 1833 and 1834. Chippenham: Picton Publishing.   Text   PDF

resembled the old Buccaneers. The Unicorn impressed Captain FitzRoy and he purchased her to assist in the hydrographic survey, renaming the vessel the Adventure. Darwin approved: She is a fine vessel of 170 tuns [sic], drawing 10 feet of water and an excellent sea boat. If the Admiralty sanctions the provisioning payment of men, this day will be an important one in the history of the Beagle. Perhaps it may shorten our cruize [sic]; anyhow it will double the work done; when at sea, it is always

A589    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Darwin's desolate islands: A naturalist in the Falklands, 1833 and 1834. Chippenham: Picton Publishing.   Text   PDF

knives, then with these very bones roasted the meat for their dinner. What curious resources will necessity put men to discover. We can safely assume, that as the previous day the St Jago had removed from the carcass enough meat to last for our expedition , that carne con cuero again appeared on the menu. Darwin's account in The Voyage of the Beagle adds a few culinary details to the bare facts recorded in the Diary: A large circular piece [of meat] taken from the back is roasted on the embers

A589    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Darwin's desolate islands: A naturalist in the Falklands, 1833 and 1834. Chippenham: Picton Publishing.   Text   PDF

the Falklands, but he made a more detailed study when he returned in 1834. His account in The Voyage of the Beagle, based on the massive stone-run now called Prince's Street (Figs 4.11 and 4.12) between the Long Island Mountain and Mt Vernet uplands, has been much quoted, but as it differs slightly from the vivid description given in his original geological notes, the latter will here be quoted in full. In very many parts of the island, the bottoms of the valleys are filled up with an astonishing

A589    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Darwin's desolate islands: A naturalist in the Falklands, 1833 and 1834. Chippenham: Picton Publishing.   Text   PDF

some palaeontologists had suggested? Or had remote areas of the world been biologically differentiated for long periods? Darwin was certainly not able to answer these questions with any degree of certainty aboard the Beagle, but later, after discussing his South American fossil mammals with Richard Owen, he became convinced of the validity of law of succession of types , and was impressed by a wonderful relationship in the same continent between the dead and the living . The fossil mammals of

A589    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Darwin's desolate islands: A naturalist in the Falklands, 1833 and 1834. Chippenham: Picton Publishing.   Text   PDF

internal heat of the earth. The debate between the Plutonists and the Neptunists , those that sought an aqueous origin for many rocks (including many of what would now be identified as igneous rocks) was an important theme in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century geology. The debate was virtually brought to an end in about 1830 with the publication of Lyell's Principles of Geology, a copy of which, as we have already seen, Charles Darwin had aboard HMS Beagle. But some of Darwin's

A589    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Darwin's desolate islands: A naturalist in the Falklands, 1833 and 1834. Chippenham: Picton Publishing.   Text   PDF

Chapter 5 Understanding the Living pattern Darwin's approach to scientific work at the time of the Falklands visits Although John Henslow had told him, before he left on the Beagle voyage, that he was an unfinished naturalist , Darwin was nevertheless an enthusiastic one. The days of beetle-collecting as a Shropshire lad, and of botanising as he walked with Henslow in the River Cam valley had made the young Darwin a competent collector and careful observer of the natural world. Although

A589    Book:     Armstrong, Patrick. 1992. Darwin's desolate islands: A naturalist in the Falklands, 1833 and 1834. Chippenham: Picton Publishing.   Text   PDF

the Falklands and that the wildness must be hereditary (DAR 31.1/241 242). The appreciation that behavioural traits might be inherited, and might be affected by environment was indeed perceptive, and an interesting precursor of Darwin's later evolutionary views.5 Darwin also compared the tameness of the Falklands birds with that of those of the Galapagos, incorporating material from both archipelagoes in his Beagle accounts (DAR 29.2/78). These com- [page] 10