The Invention of Nature

There were countless such examples – and even Darwin’s discussion of kelp at the coast of Tierra del Fuego as the most essential plant in the food chain was strikingly similar to Humboldt’s description of the Mauritia palms as a keystone species that ‘spreads life’ in the Llanos. The great aquatic forests of kelp, Darwin wrote, supported a vast array of life forms, from tiny hydra-like polyps to molluscs, small fish and crabs – all of which in turn fed cormorants, otters, seals and finally, of course, the indigenous tribes. Humboldt informed Darwin’s understanding of nature as an ecological system. Like the destruction of a tropical forest, Darwin said, the eradication of kelp would cause the loss of uncountable species as well as probably wiping out the native population of Fuegians.

Darwin modelled his own writing on Humboldt’s, fusing scientific writing with poetic description to such an extent that his journal of the Beagle voyage became remarkably similar in style and content to the Personal Narrative. So much so that his sister complained after receiving a first part of his journal in October 1832 ‘that you had, probably from reading so much of Humboldt, got his phraseology’, and ‘the kind of flowery french expressions which he uses’. Others were more complimentary and told Darwin later how delighted they were with his ‘vivid, Humboldt-like pictures’.

Humboldt showed Darwin how to investigate the natural world not from the claustrophobic angle of a geologist or zoologist, but from within and without. Both Humboldt and Darwin had the rare ability to focus in on the smallest detail – from a fleck of lichen to a tiny beetle – and then to pull back and out to examine global and comparative patterns. This flexibility of perspective allowed them both to understand the world in a completely new way. It was telescopic and microscopic, sweepingly panoramic and down to cellular levels, and moving in time from the distant geological past to the future economy of native populations.

In September 1835, a little less than four years after leaving England, the Beagle finally departed from South America to continue circumnavigating of the globe. They sailed from Lima to the Galapagos Islands, which lay 600 miles west off the Ecuadorian coast. These were strange barren islands on which birds and reptiles lived that were so tame and unaccustomed to humans that they could be easily caught. Here Darwin investigated rocks and geological formations, collected finches and mockingbirds and measured the size of the giant tortoises that roamed the islands. But it was only when he eventually returned to England and examined his collections that it became clear how important the Galapagos Islands would become for Darwin’s evolutionary theory. For Darwin the islands marked a turning point, although he didn’t realize it at the time.

After five weeks in the Galapagos, the Beagle sailed on into the emptiness of the South Pacific towards Tahiti, and from there to New Zealand and Australia. From the western coast of Australia they crossed the Indian Ocean and rounded the tip of South Africa before sailing across the Atlantic Ocean back to South America. The last months of the voyage were hard on everybody. ‘There never was a Ship,’ Darwin wrote, ‘so full of home-sick heroes.’ Whenever they met merchant vessels during those weeks, he felt the ‘most dangerous inclination to bolt’ and jump ship, he admitted. They had been away for almost five years – so long, that he found himself dreaming of England’s green and pleasant lands.

On 1 August 1836, after crossing the Indian Ocean and then the Atlantic, they briefly stopped in Bahia in Brazil, where they had made their first South American landfall at the end of February 1832, before finally turning north for the last leg of their voyage. Seeing Bahia was a sobering experience for Darwin. Instead of admiring the tropical blooms in the Brazilian rainforest as he had during their first visit, he now longed to see stately horse chestnuts in an English park. He was desperate to get home. He had had enough of this ‘zig-zag manner’ of sailing, he wrote to his sister. ‘I loathe, I abhor the sea, & all ships which sail on it.’

By the end of September they passed the Azores in the northern Atlantic and sailed towards England. Darwin was in his cabin, as seasick as he had been on his first day. Even after all these years, he was still not used to the rhythm of the sea and moaned, ‘I hate every wave of the ocean.’ Lying in his hammock, he filled his bulging journal with his last observations, summing up his thoughts about the previous five years. First impressions, he noted in one of his very last entries, were often shaped by preconceived ideas. ‘All mine were taken from the vivid descriptions in the Personal Narrative.’