signs, in doing which I passed my hand near his face. He, I suppose, thought I was in a passion, and was going to strike him, for instantly, with frightened look and half-shut eyes, he dropped his hands. I shall never forget my feelings of surprise, disgust, and shame, at seeing a great, powerful man afraid even to ward off a blow directed, as he thought, at his face. This man had been trained to a degredation lower than the slavery of the most helpless animals." His feelings were always strong on the subject of slavery. Towards the close of the Journal, describing his last departure from Brazil, he writes-"I thank God that I shall never again visit a slave country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings when, passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate"; and he adds, "it makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble," to think what Englishmen and Americans have been guilty of in this matter.

In contrast to the dark picture of human cruelty, we have Mr. Darwin's description of the beauty of nature in the forest, as he saw it during the excursion from Rio. The palm trees, growing among the common branching kinds, gave the scene an intertropical character. "The woods were ornamented by the Cabbage Palm-one of the most beautiful of its family. With a stem so narrow that it might be clasped with the two hands, it waves its elegant head at the height of forty or fifty feet from the ground. If the eye

was turned from the world of foliage above to the ground beneath, it was attracted by the extreme elegance of the leaves of the ferns and mimosæ. The latter in some parts covered the surface with a brushwood only a few inches high. In walking across these thick beds of mimosa, a broad track was marked by the change of shade produced by the drooping of their sensitive petioles. It is easy to

specify the individual objects of admiration in these grand scenes; but it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, astonishment, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind."

Nearly four years were passed in coasting round South America, but Mr. Darwin spent much of his time in journeying inland; and almost every day seems to have brought fresh stores of knowledge for future use, and fresh occasion to scrutinize very closely the scientific theories of the time. The discovery of the remains of gigantic quadrupeds at Bahia Blanca leads him to examine the assumption that large animals require luxuriant vegetation, and, with abundant proof, he declares it to be false. Side by side with this, we may place the curious and instructive facts mentioned by Mr. Darwin in connection with a remarkable drought in Buenos Ayres and St. Fé between 1827 and 1830. So great was the drought that in some parts cattle, which abounded before, completely perished, and meat had to be imported to feed the inhabitants. The animals rushed in hundreds of thousands into the rivers, and, weakened by hunger, were drowned. "What would be the opinion of a geologist, viewing such an enormous collection of bones, of all kinds of animals, and of all ages, embedded in one thick, earthy mass? Would he not attribute it to a flood having swept over the surface of the land, rather than to the common order of things?" Again, in Banda Oriental, oxen of a very curious breed are found, with lips which do not join. The consequence of this peculiarity is that, during a drought, the niata cattle, as they are called, cannot easily browse on the twigs of trees, and reeds, and hence they perish before the common breed; "which affords a good illustration of our inability to judge, from the ordinary habits of life, by what circumstances the rarity or extinction of a species may be determined." And in another place the similarity of the extinct to the living animals calls forth this pregnant remark-"The wonderful relationship in the

same continent between the dead and the living will, I do not doubt, hereafter throw more light on the appearance of organic beings on the earth, and their disappearance from it, than any other class of facts." We have here the germ of "the great law of the long-enduring, but not immutable, succession of the same types within the same areas," which is set forth in the Origin of Species.

When the Beagle reached Tierra del Fuego, and the natives advanced to the shore, Mr. Darwin saw, "without exception, the most curious and interesting spectacle" he ever beheld. "I could not have believed," he says, "how wide was the difference between savage and civilized man; it is greater than between a wild and domesticated animal, inasmuch as in man there is greater power of improvement." In Tierra del Fuego Mr. Darwin had many opportunities of studying man in his most uncivilized condition; beings of whom he says, "one can hardly make oneself believe that they are fellow creatures and inhabitants of the same world"; and he gives us an interesting account of what seems to Europeans their unutterably wretched life, but comes to the conclusion that, as there is no reason to believe they decrease in number, "we must suppose they enjoy a sufficient share of happiness to make life worth having." Their language scarcely deserved to be called articulate; in winter, when pressed by hunger, they killed and devoured their old women before they killed their dogs; they were almost like the wild beasts in their apparent incapacity to reason on some simple subjects.

Within the last few years, a Christian Church has been established among the Fuegians, with its schools and orphanage, and all the machinery of an English parish, and the change is wonderful. The natives live in cottages, cultivate their gardens, and follow the various occupations of civilized life; and part of the Scriptures is translated into their barbarous tongue. When Mr. Darwin heard what had taken place he was amazed,

and, writing to Admiral Sullivan (who accompanied Captain Fitzroy in the Beagle), he said "I had always thought the civilization of the Japanese the most wonderful thing in history, but I am now convinced that what the missionaries have done in Tierra del Fuego, in civilizing the natives, is at least as wonderful." Not content with expressing his admiration, Mr. Darwin sent a donation to the South American Missionary Society by which the work was accomplished; and amongst the tributes paid to his memory when he died was a paragraph in the Society's annual report, recording that his death had been "the cause of deep regret throughout the world," and paying "a sincere tribute of respect to the memory of a man of unblemished character, of the highest intellectual capacity, and of rare attainments." The incident is honourable both to Mr. Darwin and to the Society which recognized his worth.

From Tierra del Fuego the Beagle passed into the Pacific, and cruised slowly up the western coast of South America, when Mr. Darwin felt the shock of a great earthquake and examined its effects in connection with volcanic action; and in September, 1835, the voyagers reached the Galapagos Archipelago, in some respects the most interesting to a naturalist of all the countries which they visited. The Archipelago is a group of islands formed of volcanic rocks, containing probably two thousand craters; but the chief peculiarity of the group lies in the novelty of the flora and the fauna, which differ even on the various islands.

It was most striking to be surrounded by new birds, new reptiles, new shells, new insects, new plants, and yet by innumerable trifling details of structure, and, even by the tones of voice and plumage of the birds, to have the temperate plains of Patagonia, or the hot, dry deserts of Northern Chile, vividly brought before my eyes. Why, on these small points of land, which within a late geological period must have been covered by the ocean, which are formed of basaltic lava, and therefore differ in geological character from the American continent, and which are placed under a peculiar climate,—

why were their aboriginal inhabitants, associated, I may add, in different proportions both in kind and number from those on the continent, and therefore acting on each other in a different manner-why were they created on American types of organization? It is probable that the islands of the Cape de Verd group resemble, in all their physical conditions, far more closely the Galapagos Islands than these latter physically resemble the coast of America, yet the aboriginal inhabitants of the two groups are totally unlike; those of the Cape de Verd Islands bearing the impress of Africa, as the inhabitants of the Galapagos Archipelago are stamped with that of America.

The facts which he observed in the Galapagos Archipelago furnished Mr. Darwin with valuable material for his remarks in the Origin of Species on "the relations of the inhabitants of islands to those of the nearest mainland."

In the Galapagos Islands, which have not long been regularly inhabited by man, Mr. Darwin was struck by the curious tameness of the birds. He pushed a hawk from the branch of a tree with the muzzle of his gun ; a mocking-thrush alighted on a pitcher in his hand, and sipped out of it; and he saw a boy standing by a well, with a switch, killing for his dinner a number of doves and finches which came to drink. After giving examples of similar tameness in other parts of the world little frequented by man, Mr. Darwin says"In regard to the wildness of birds towards man, there is no way of accounting for it, except as an inherited habit. Comparatively few young birds, in any one year, have been injured by man in England, yet almost all, even nestlings, are afraid of him; many individuals, on the other hand, both at Galapagos and at the Falklands, have been pursued and injured by man, but yet have not learned a salutary dread of him. We may infer from these facts what havoc the introduction of any new beast of prey must cause in a country, before the instincts of the indigenous inhabitants have become adapted to the stranger's craft or power."