116 THE COMING [CH. 



When making his first original observations among 

 the volcanic cones and craters of St Jago in the 

 Cape-de-Verde Islands, he says ' It then first dawned 

 on me that I might perhaps write a book on the 

 geology of the different countries visited, and this 

 made me thrill with delight 119 .' He tells us concern- 

 ing his regular occupations on board the Beagle, that 

 'during some part of the day, I wrote my Journal 

 and took much pains in describing carefully and 

 vividly all that I had seen : and this was good 

 practice 120 / 



'Later in the voyage* he says 'FitzRoy* (the 

 Captain of the Beagle) 'asked me to read some of my 

 Journal and declared it would be worth publishing, 

 so here was a second book in prospect 121 ! ' 



Darwin's first published writings were the extracts 

 from his letters which Henslow read to the Philo- 

 sophical Society of Cambridge, and those which 

 Sedgwick submitted to the Geological Society. At 

 Ascension, on the voyage home, a letter from 

 Darwin's sisters had informed him of the com- 

 mendation with which Sedgwick had spoken to his 

 father of these papers, and he wrote fifty years 

 afterwards : ' After reading this letter, I clambered 

 over the mountains of Ascension with a bounding 

 step, and made the volcanic rocks ring under my 

 geological hammer.' When in 1839 his charming 

 Journal of Researches was published he records that 



