CHARLES DARWIN—WEISMANN. 439 
country on horseback, in a boat, or on foot. In Brazil, on the plains 
of the La Plata River, and in Patagonia he made excursions into the 
interior which lasted for weeks, and he was thus able to see and 
investigate everything that interested him. 
In all his descriptions of what he saw his keen appreciation of the 
beauty and grandeur of nature are manifest. Thus he writes from 
Bahia on the first day of his arrival in South America: “ The day 
has passed delightfully. Delight itself, however, is a weak term to 
express the feelings of a naturalist who for the first time has wandered 
by himself in a Brazilian forest. The elegance of the grasses, 
the novelty of the parasitical plants, the beauty of the flowers, the 
glossy green of the foliage, but above all the general luxuriance of 
the vegetation, filled me with admiration. A most paradoxical 
mixture of sound and silence pervades the shady parts of the wood. 
The noise from the insects is so loud that it may be heard even in a 
vessel anchored several hundred yards from the shore; yet within 
the recesses of the forest a universal silence appears to reign. Toa 
person fond of natural history such a day as this brings with it a 
deeper pleasure than he can ever hope to experience again” (p. 4, 
1884 ed.). 
Not less delightful are his descriptions of the monotonous and 
almost endless plains of Patagonia and the La Plata River, over which, 
accompanied by Gaucho Indians, he rode for many days; or his 
account of the wild mountain scenery of Tierra del Fuego, with its 
gloomy evergreen woods, broken into by deep inlets and bays in 
which whales disported themselves, and its mountains whose dark 
cloud-laden summits are swept by the most violent storms. A 
different picture is called up by Darwin’s description of his ascent 
from the “ Vale of Paradise” (Valparaiso) up the Cordilleras to a 
height of 13,000 feet, and the view from there down upon the coast 
region and the Pacific Ocean far beneath him. And how many 
other passages might be cited! 
He cared, however, not only for what was beautiful, but for what 
was most interesting from a scientific point of view. Thus he dis- 
covered in a pass in the Cordilleras a stratum of fossil shells, a 
proof that this place was at one time a part of the sea floor, and 
that therefore it had been raised in the course of ages more than 
13,000 feet. 
His journal contains a wealth of observations about plants and 
animals as well as about man and many detailed accounts of the 
geological structure of the countries visited. We see how well his 
Cambridge studies and the excursions he made there had prepared 
him for this work. 
I can not enter into any details of his observations, but I must at 
least mention those which deal with the facts that led him gradually 
45745°—sm 1909——29 
