VOYAGE OF THE 'BEAGLE' 245 



provided for Darwin by the voyage of the Beagle. 

 The route lay by the Cape de Verd Islands across the 

 Atlantic to the coast of Brazil, southward to the Strait 

 of Magellan, and up the western side of the South 

 American continent as far as Callao. It then struck 

 westward across the Pacific Ocean by the Galapagos 

 archipelago, Taheiti, New Zealand, Sydney and Tas- 

 mania, turning round into the Indian Ocean by way of 

 Keeling Islands and the Mauritius to the Cape of Good 

 Hope, and then by St. Helena and Ascension Island 

 to the coast of Brazil, where the chronometrical 

 measurement of the world, which was the ostensible 

 object of the Beagle's circumnavigation, was to be 

 completed, and so once more across the Atlantic 

 homewards. Almost every aspect of Nature was en- 

 countered in such a journey. The luxuriant forests of 

 the tropics, the glaciers and snowfields of Tierra del 

 Fuego, the arid wastes of Patagonia, the green and 

 fertile Pampas, the volcanic and coral islets of mid- 

 ocean, the lofty Cordillera of a great continent, arose 

 one by one before the eager gaze of the young 

 observer. Each scene widened his experience of the 

 outer aspects of the world, quickened his powers of 

 observation, deepened his sympathy with Nature as 

 a whole, and likewise supplied him with abundant 

 materials for future study in the life-work which he 

 had now definitely set before himself. We must 

 think of him during those five momentous years as 

 patiently accumulating the facts and shaping in his 

 mind the problems which were to furnish the occu- 

 pation of all his after life. 



During the voyage he had written long letters to his 



