The Voyage of the Beagle
by Charles Darwin
When the Beagle left Devonport on December 27, 1831, Charles Darwin was twenty-two years old and sailed for a lifetime. It was supposed to take five years and transform him from an elegant and somewhat aimless young man into a scientific celebrity. More important was to mobilize intellectual currents that culminated in the advent of The Origin of Species in the Victorian drawing rooms of 1859. His diary is brilliant and directly shows us a naturalist who makes observations about patients, especially in geology. In addition to numerous details of natural history, it records many things that came to the Darwinian eye, from the Argentine Civil War to the neo-colonial settlements of Australia.
