36 LIFE OF 



rest content with what has been accomplished in diminish- 

 ing the sufferings of slaves, white and black, the impression 

 produced on a scientific man by what he saw. It is well, 

 too, that it should be brought forcibly home to English- 

 men that Darwin's heart was no less sympathetic than 

 his intelligence was far-seeing, and that the testimony of 

 friends of late years to his moral grandeur is corroborated 

 by the personal records of his years of travel. 



The variety and interest of the observations made 

 during his stay at Rio, when tropical nature was still 

 a fresh and unexplored page to the young observer, are 

 wonderful. Cabbage palms, liana creepers, luxuriant 

 fern leaves roads, bridges, and soil planarian worms, 

 frogs which climbed perpendicular sheets of glass, the 

 light of fireflies, brilliant butterflies, fights between 

 spiders and wasps, the victories of ants over difficulties, 

 the habits of monkeys, the little Brazilian boys prac- 

 tising knife-throwing all these came in turn under his 

 watchful eyes and are vividly described. 



In July, 1832, Monte Video was reached, and the 

 Beagle was occupied in surveying the extreme southern 

 and eastern coasts of America, south of La Plata, during 

 the succeeding two years. During ten weeks at 

 Maldonado an entertaining excursion to the River 

 Polanco was made, and many a humorous remark 

 appears in the Journal relating to it. " The greater num- 

 ber of the inhabitants [of European descent] had an 

 indistinct idea that England, London, and North 

 America were difTerent names for the same place; but 

 the better-informed well knew that London and North 

 America were separate countries close together, and that 



