Fossils, Finches and Fuegians: Charles Darwin’s Adventures and Discoveries on the Beagle

CHAPTER 6

Rio de Janeiro

On 18 March, after taking further soundings for the chart of the Bay of All Saints, the Beagle sailed slowly out in a light wind, and headed for the Abrolhos, a group of uninhabited islets off the coast of Brazil some 350 miles south of Bahia. Five days later the wind was still light, but there was a sufficient swell to make Charles uncomfortable. Occupation was always the best cure, so he settled down at his microscope to examine a mould called mucor growing on ginger from the steward’s cupboard. He wrote in his notes:

Mucor growing on green ginger: colour yellow, length from 1/20 to 1/15 of an inch. Diameter of stalk .001, of ball at extremity .006. Stalk transparent, cylindrical for about 1/10 of length, near to ball it is flattened, angular & rather broarder:* Terminal spherule full of grains, .0001 in diameter & sticking together in planes: When placed in water the ball partially burst & sent forth with granules large bubbles of air. A rush of fluid was visible in the stalk or cylinder. If merely breathed on, the spherule expanded itself & three conical semitransparent projections were formed on surface. (Much in the same manner as is seen in Pollen) These cones in a short time visibly were contracted & drawn within the spherule.

Unfortunately the specimen of the mould Mucor (Mucoraceae) was not well preserved, and Henslow wrote to Charles in January 1833 after receiving the first consignment from the Beagle, ‘For goodness sake what is No. 223; it looks like the remains of an electric explosion, a mere mass of soot – something very curious I dare say.’

Around the Abrolhos there were shallow rocky shoals stretching far out to the east. One of the tasks allotted to the Beagle by Beaufort was to determine the precise extent of these shoals. FitzRoy therefore steered south-east to the latitude of the Abrolhos, and then turned west, sounding all the time, until a well-defined rocky bank was reached at a roughly constant depth of thirty fathoms. After spending two days surveying parts of the Abrolhos that had not been properly covered by a French expedition under Baron Roussin in 1818–21, perhaps because of the disconcertingly sudden changes in depth called by the French ‘coups de sonde’, two parties landed on 29 March. Charles launched an attack on the rocks and insects and plants, while members of the crew began a much more bloody one on the birds, of which an enormous number were slaughtered. Charles reported to FitzRoy that the rocks, rising to about a hundred feet above the sea in horizontal strata, were of gneiss and sandstone. The general description of the islands entered in his notes was:

The Abrolhos Islands seen from a short distance are of a bright green colour. The vegetation consists of succulent plants & Gramina [grasses], interspersed with a few bushes & Cactuses. Small as my collection of plants is from the Abrolhos I think it contains nearly every species then flowering. Birds of the family of Totipalmes [an old group name for some web-footed sea birds] are exceedingly abundant, such as Gannets, Tropic birds & Frigates. The number of Saurians is perhaps the most surprising thing, almost every stone has its accompanying lizard: Spiders are in great numbers: likewise rats: The bottom of the adjoining sea is thickly covered by enormous brain stones [solitary stony corals similar in appearance to a brain]; many of them could not be less than a yard in diameter.

The Beagle sailed on towards Rio, and on 1 April all hands were busy making fools of one another. The hook was easily baited, and when Lieutenant Sulivan cried out, ‘Darwin, did you ever see a Grampus: Bear a hand then,’ Charles rushed out in a transport of enthusiasm, and was received by a roar of laughter from the whole watch.

Eighty miles from Rio they passed close to the promontory of Cape Frio, where not many years ago gleaming white sand still covered the shore, but today there is a line of skyscrapers. FitzRoy was anxious to revisit the scene where, on the evening of 5 December 1830, the frigate HMS Thetis, bound urgently for England with a cargo of treasure, had been battling desperately against contrary winds and was carried far off course by an unsuspected current, until in strong rain and very poor visibility she had sailed at nine knots directly on to the cliffs at Cape Frio, bringing down all three of her masts and injuring many men. In the subsequent struggles, with waves breaking heavily on the hull, twenty-five members of the crew were lost, and the ship quickly sank. FitzRoy had at one time served as a lieutenant on the Thetis, and concluded his deeply felt account of this tragic accident with the words:

Those who never run any risk; who sail only when the wind is fair; who heave to when approaching land, though perhaps a day’s sail distant; and who even delay the performance of urgent duties until they can be done easily and quite safely; are, doubtless, extremely prudent persons: but rather unlike those officers whose names will never be forgotten while England has a navy.58

Arriving at Rio de Janeiro on the evening of 4 April, Charles proudly noted that ‘In most glorious style did the little Beagle enter the port and lower her sails alongside the Flagship … Whilst the Captain was away with the commanding officer, we tacked about the harbor & gained great credit from the manner in which the Beagle was manned & directed.’ As Philip Gidley King remembered it:

Though Mr Darwin knew little or nothing of nautical matters, on one day he volunteered his services to the First Lieutenant. The occasion was when the ship first entered Rio Janeiro. It was decided to make a display of smartness in shortening sail before the numerous men-of-war at the anchorage under the flags of all nations. The ship entered the harbour under every yard of canvas which could be spread upon her yards including studding sails aloft on both sides, the lively sea breeze which brought her in being right aft. Mr Darwin was told to hold to a main royal sheet in each hand and a top mast studding sail tack in his teeth. At the order ‘Shorten Sail’ he was to let go and clap on to any rope he saw was short-handed – this he did and enjoyed the fun of it, afterwards remarking ‘the feat could not have been performed without him’.55

In view of the political instability at that period of Brazil and the newly liberated countries on its southern borders, the Royal Navy maintained a squadron of ships at the magnificent harbour of Rio de Janeiro for the general protection of British interests in South America. It was commanded by Admiral Sir Thomas Baker. While Charles was assisting the Beagle so skilfully to shorten sail, the Captain was receiving orders from the Commander-in-Chief for the exact position to be taken up by the Beagle and other ships of the squadron in case marines had to be landed to assist in quelling a mutiny that had broken out among the troops in the town. Fortunately the need did not arise, and all on the Beagle settled down happily to read their accumulated mail from home.

The next morning, Charles landed with the ship’s first official artist Augustus Earle at the Palace steps. Earle had once lived in Rio for some while, and after he had introduced Charles to the centre of the city, they found themselves ‘a most delightful house’ at Botafogo which would provide them with excellent lodgings. Its situation, as painted by Conrad Martens when he was passing through Rio a few months later (Plate 2), was an attractively rural one, but nowadays the shore of Botafogo is regrettably occupied by a sprawling network of multi-lane superhighways. The house was in due course also shared with ‘Miss Fuegia Basket, who’, remarked Charles, ‘daily increases in every direction except height’, with the Sergeant of the ship’s marines, and with young Philip Gidley King, who wrote of it with affection:

At Rio Janeiro Mr Darwin thoroughly enjoyed the new life in a tropical climate. Hiring a cottage at Botafogo, a lovely land-locked bay with a sandy beach of a dazzling whiteness, Mr Darwin took for one of his shore companions the writer, who from having been in the former voyage with his father although then of tender years was able to remember and to recount to the so far inexperienced philosopher his own adventures. “Come King” he would say “you have been round Cape Horn and I have not yet done so, but do not come your traveller’s yarns on me”. One of these was that he had seen whales jump out of the water all but their tails, another that he had seen ostriches swimming in salt water. For disbelieving these statements however, Mr Darwin afterwards made ample reparation. The first was verified one fine afternoon on the East coast of Tierra del Fuego. A large number of whales were around the ship, the Captain, the “Philosopher” and the Surveyors were on the poop, presently Mr Darwin’s arm was seized as a gigantic beast rose three fourths of his huge body out of the water. “Look Sir look! Will you believe me now?” was the exclamation of the hitherto discredited youth. “Yes! anything you tell me in future” was the quick reply of the kind-hearted naturalist.55

It was in the Beagle Channel on 28 January 1833 that Charles was thus enlightened:

the day was overpowringly [sic] hot, so much so that our skin was burnt; this is quite a novelty in Tierra del F. The Beagle Channel is here very striking, the view both ways is not intercepted, & to the West extends to the Pacific. So narrow and straight a channell & in length nearly 120 miles, must be a rare phenomenon. We were reminded that it was an arm of the sea by the number of Whales, which were spouting in different directions: the water is so deep that one morning two monstrous whales were swimming within stone throw of the shore.59

Charles at once set about organising an expedition on horseback to the Rio Macaé, some one hundred miles to the north-east of Rio. His ‘extraordinary & quixotic set of adventurers’ consisted firstly of an Irish businessman, Patrick Lennon, who had lived in Rio for twenty years and owned an estate near the mouth of the Macaé that he had not previously visited; he was accompanied by a nephew. Then there was Mr Lawrie, ‘a well informed clever Scotchman, selfish unprincipled man, by trade partly slave merchant partly Swindler’, with a friend who was apprentice to a druggist, and whose elder brother’s Brazilian father-in-law Senhor Manuel Figuireda owned a large estate on the Macaé at Socégo. As a guide for the party Charles took along a black boy. The first obstacle was to obtain passports for an excursion to the interior. The local officials were somewhat less than helpful, ‘but the prospect of wild forests tenanted by beautiful birds, Monkeys & Sloths, & Lakes by Cavies & Alligators, will make any naturalist lick the dust even from the foot of a Brazilian’.

The exotic cavalcade set out on 8 April, and Charles was entranced by the stillness of the woods – except for the large and brilliant butterflies which lazily fluttered about, with blue the prevailing tint – and by the infinite numbers of lianas and parasitical plants, whose beautiful flowers struck him as the most novel object to be seen in a tropical forest. In the evening the scene by the dimmed light of the moon was most desolate, with fireflies flitting by and the solitary snipe uttering its plaintive cry while the distant and sullen roar of the sea scarcely broke the quiet of the night. The inn at which they spent their first night sleeping on straw mats was a miserable one, though at others they fared sumptuously with wine and spirits at dinner, coffee in the evening, and fish for breakfast. The five days needed for the journey to the mouth of the Macaé were often strenuous, and the amount of labour that their horses could perform was impressive, even on the occasion when the riders had to swim alongside them to cross the Barro de St João.

On 13 April they rested at Senhor Figuireda’s luxurious fazenda at Socégo, where Charles was relieved to see how kindly the slaves were treated, and how happy they seemed. Two days later he had a very different impression of slavery when Mr Lennon threatened to sell at a public auction an illegitimate mulatto child to whom his agent was much attached, and even to take all the women and children from their husbands to sell them separately at the market in Rio. Despite his feeling that Mr Lennon was not at heart an inhumane person, Charles reflected ruefully on the strange and inexplicable effect that prevailing custom and self-interest might have on a man’s behaviour. It was agreed that Senhor Manuel should be asked to arbitrate in the quarrel, which he presumably did in favour of the slaves, although Charles did not report on the outcome. Charles returned to Socégo, where he spent the most enjoyable part of the whole expedition collecting insects and reptiles in the woods, and admiring the trees:

The forests here are ornamented by one of the most elegant, the Cabbage-Palm, with a stem so narrow that with the two hands it may be clasped, it waves its most elegant head from 30 to 50 feet above the ground. The soft part, from which the leaves spring, affords a most excellent vegetable. The woody creepers, themselves covered by creepers, are of great thickness, varying from 1 to nearly 2 feet in circumference. Many of the older trees present a most curious spectacle, being covered with tresses of a liana, which much resembles bundles of hay. If the eye is turned from the world of foliage above, to the ground, it is attracted by the extreme elegance of the leaves of numberless species of Ferns & Mimosas. Thus it is easy to specify individual objects of admiration; but it is nearly impossible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings which are excited; wonder, astonishment & sublime devotion fill & elevate the mind.

For the journey home, when Charles was accompanied only by Mr Lennon, the same route was followed, though back in Rio, having carelessly lost their passports, they had some difficulty in proving that their horses were not stolen. Charles returned to the Beagle, where he learnt that the surgeon Robert McCormick had been ‘invalided’, that is to say had quarrelled with the Captain and the First Lieutenant, and was about to go back to England on HMS Tyne. The news did not greatly distress Charles, for he had decided even before leaving Devonport that ‘my friend the Doctor is an ass … at present he is in great tribulation, whether his cabin shall be painted French Grey or a dead white – I hear little excepting this subject from him’. And at St Jago McCormick had revealed himself as ‘a philosopher of rather an antient date; at St Jago by his own account he made general remarks during the first fortnight & collected particular facts during the last’. Robert McCormick was an ambitious Scot, determined to make a career for himself as a naval surgeon, who had sailed to the Arctic in 1827 with William Edward Parry as assistant surgeon on the Hecla. His nose was put thoroughly out of joint on the Beagle by finding that Charles had been introduced by the Captain to look after natural history, one of the traditional responsibilities of the ship’s surgeon. He subsequently sailed to the Antarctic as surgeon on the Erebus, and took part in the search for Franklin in the Arctic in 1852–53. But when he finally retired in 1865, the professional recognition that he had sought for so long still eluded him. He was succeeded as acting surgeon on the Beagle by Benjamin Bynoe, with whom Charles remained on the best of terms for the rest of the voyage.