Levison Wood - Great Expeditions - 50 Journeys that changed our world

The insatiable collector

The Beagle stayed for five weeks and Darwin was an exhaustive collector: ‘The natural history of this archipelago is very remarkable: it seems to be a little world within itself; the greater number of its inhabitants, both vegetable and animal, being found nowhere else,’ and the evidence amassed provided the spur for Darwin to develop his theory of evolution.

The Beagle then set sail across the Pacific, reaching Tahiti in November, northern New Zealand in December, and Sydney on 12 January 1836. The Beagle next sailed to Tasmania, then onto the Keeling Islands (now Cocos Islands) in the middle of the Indian Ocean. By June they had reached Cape Town in South Africa, where they stayed for a month, and then it was on to St Helena and Ascension Island.

Finally, after a brief return to Brazil, the Beagle docked at Falmouth on 2 October 1836. Fitzroy had completed much valuable surveying work and Darwin had gained the knowledge and enthusiasm to devote his life to natural history, and his greatest achievement, the publication in 1859 of On the Origin of Species , which outlined his landmark theory of evolution.

A caricature of Darwin as an ape, on the cover of the French satirical magazine La Petite Lune , published in 1878.

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