28 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [ch. ii. 



Fitz-Koy's temper was a most unfortunate one. It was 

 usually worst in the early morning, and with his eagle eye 

 he could generally detect something amiss about the ship, 

 and was then unsparing in his blame. He was very kind to 

 me, but was a man very difficult to live with on the intimate 

 terms which necessarily followed from our messing by our- 

 selves in the same cabin. We had several quarrels; for 

 instance, early in the voyage at Bahia, in Brazil, he defended 

 and praised slavery, which I abominated, and told me that 

 he had just visited a great slave-owner, who had called up 

 many of his slaves and asked them whether they were happy, 

 and whether they wished to be free, and all answered " No." 

 I then asked him, perhaps w r ith a sneer, whether he thought 

 that the answer of slaves in the presence of their master 

 was worth anything? This made him excessively angry, 

 and he said that as I doubted his word we could not live 

 any longer together. I thought that I should have been 

 compelled to leave the ship ; but as soon as the news spread, 

 which it did quickly, as the captain sent for the first lieu- 

 tenant to assuage his anger by abusing me, I was deeply 

 gratified by receiving an invitation from all the gun-room 

 officers to mess with them. But after a few hours Fitz-Eoy 

 showed his usual magnanimity by sending an officer to me 

 with an apology and a request that I would continue to live 

 with him. 



His character was in several respects one of the most 

 noble which I have ever known. 



The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most im- 

 portant event in my life, and has determined my whole 

 career ; yet it depended on so small a circumstance as my 

 uncle offering to drive me thirty miles to Shrewsbury, which 

 few uncles would have done, and on such a trifle as the shape 

 of my nose. I have always felt that I owe to the voyage 

 the first real training or education of my mind ; I w r as led 

 to attend closely to several branches of natural history, and 

 thus my powers of observation were improved, though they 

 w r ere always fairly developed. 



The investigation of the geology of all the places visited 

 was far more important, as reasoning here comes into play. 



On first examining a new district, nothing can appear 

 more hopeless than the chaos of rocks ; but by recording 



based on a myth. See the Quarterly Review, 1847, vol. lxxxi. p. 83 ; also 

 Hayward's Biographical and Critical Essays, 1873, vol. ii. p. 201. 



