SEA SICKNESS. 



197 



hear of your happiness and prosperity." Mr. King describes 

 the pleasure my father seemed to take " in pointing out to me 

 as a youngster the delights of the tropical nights, with their 

 balmy breezes eddying out of the sails above us, and the sea 

 lighted up by the passage of the ship through the never-end- 

 ing streams of phosphorescent animalculge." 



It has been assumed that his ill-health in later years was 

 due to his having suffered so much from sea-sickness. This 

 he did not himself believe, but rather ascribed his bad health 

 to the hereditary fault which came out as gout in some of the 

 past generations, I am not quite clear as to how much he 

 actually suffered from sea-sickness ; my impression is distinct 

 that, according to his own memory, he was not actually ill 

 after the first three weeks, but constantly uncomfortable when 

 the vessel pitched at all heavily. But, judging from his let- 

 ters, and from the evidence of some of the officers, it would 

 seem that in later years he forgot the extent of the discomfort 

 from which he suffered. Writing June 3, 1836, from the 

 Cape of Good Hope, he says : " It is *a lucky thing for me 

 that the voyage is drawing to its close, for I positively suffer 

 more from sea-sickness now than three years ago." Admiral 

 Lort Stokes wrote to the Times ^ April 25, 1883 : — 



" May I beg a corner for my feeble testimony to the 

 marvellous persevering endurance in the cause of science of 

 that great naturalist, my old and lost friend, Mr. Charles 

 Darwin, whose remains are so very justly to be honoured with 

 a resting-place in Westminster Abbey ? 



"Perhaps no one can better testify to his early and most 

 trying labours than myself. We worked together for several 

 years at the same table in the poop cabin of the Beagle during 

 her celebrated voyage, he with his microscope and myself at 

 the charts. It was often a very lively end of the little craft, 

 and distressingly so to my old friend, who suffered greatly 

 from sea-sickness. After perhaps an hour's work he would 

 say to me, ' Old fellow, I must take the horizontal for it,' that 

 being the best relief position from ship motion ; a stretch 



