Evolution's Captain Read Free

some green patches of jungle; but, upon the whole, nothing can be more sterile and repulsive than the view.
    The scenery in the Strait of Magellan should not have looked repulsive or otherworldly to Stokes. In places it resembles the European Alps, or the magnificence of the Scottish Highlands, which had been widely appreciated in the romantic fiction of Sir Walter Scott. (Stokes’s use of the word “jungle” to describe vegetation is misleading: what he saw was a dense scrim of tundra mosses and thigh-high forests of storm-bent trees; average temperatures ashore hovered year-round at just above freezing; snow frequently settled over this “jungle.”) In the more protected fjords, the landscapes resemble those described by Vancouver and Cook in their accounts of travels along the west coast of North America and Australia and New Zealand, or the early nineteenth-century paintings of the Hudson River Valley and the untrammeled spaces of the new United States, all of which had set people in England to talking about the sublimity of such natural edens.
    But Stokes would not see it. He did not agree with Pigafetta that “there is not in the world a more beautiful country.” To him it became a malignant vision. He began to hate it with a poison that worked its way through him, through his journal, and it appeared inescapable:
    The coast between Capes Isabel and Santa Lucia is dangerous to approach nearer than ten miles, for there are within that distance many sunken rocks…the general aspect of this portion of the coast is similar to the most dreary parts of the Magalhaenic regions.
    The conditions through which he attempted to push the Beagle did nothing to lighten his view.
    By 8 pm we were reduced to the close-reefed main-topsail and reefed foresail. The gale continued with unabated violence during the 6th, 7th, and 8th (April), from the north, N.W. and S.W., with a confused mountainous sea. Our decks were constantly flooded…the little boat which we carried astern was washed away by a heavy sea that broke over us…the marine barometer was broken by the violent motion of the vessel….
    The effect of this wet and miserable weather, of which we had had so much since leaving Port Famine, was too manifest by the state of the sick list, on which were now many patients with catarrhal, pulmonary, and rheumatic complaints…
    The ship was frequently stormbound, frustrating Stokes’s attempts at progress and the success of his mission.
    Nothing could be worse than the weather we had during nine days’ stay here [Port Santa Barbara]; the wind, in whatever quarter it stood, brought thick heavy clouds, which preciptated themselves in torrents, or in drizzling rain…
    Ship management was always difficult. At times boats had to be lowered to drag the Beagle from possible shipwreck.
    After running two miles through a labyrinth of rocks and kelp, we were compelled to haul out, and in doing so scarcely weathered, by a ship’s length, the outer islet. Deeming it useless to expend further time in the examination of this dangerous portion of the gulf, we proceeded towards Cape Tres Montes…
    Stokes pushed on up the western shores of Patagonia for another two months. His journal revealed a mounting catalog of torment and failure, and a pathological estrangement from his work.
    Exceedingly bad weather detained us at this anchorage. From the time of our arrival on the evening of the 21st, until midnightof the 22d, it rained in torrents, without the intermission of a single minute, the wind being strong and squally at W., W.N.W., and N.W….
    Another day and night of incessant rain. In the morning of the 25th we had some showers of hail, and at daylight found that a crust of ice, about the thickness of a dollar, had been formed in all parts of the harbour….
    Here we were detained until the 10th of June by the worst weather I ever experienced…. Nothing could be more dreary