58 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 



many hours in Cwm Idwal, examining all the rocks 

 with extreme care, as Sedgwick was anxious to find 

 fossils in them ; buLneither ofjos saw a trace of the 

 wonderful glacial phenomena all around us ; we did not 

 notice the plainly scored rocks, the perched boulders, 

 the lateral and terminal moraines. Yet these phe- 

 nomena are so conspicuous that, as I declared in a 

 paper published many years afterwards in the ' Philo- 

 sophical Magazine/ * a house burnt down by fire did 

 not tell its story more plainly than did this valley. If 

 it had still been filled by a glacier, the phenomena 

 would have been less distinct than they now are. 



At Capel Curig I left Sedgwick and went in a 

 straight line by compass and map across the moun- 

 tains to Barmouth, never following any track unless it 

 coincided with my course. I thus came on some 

 strange wild places, and enjoyed much this manner of 

 travelling. I visited Barmouth to see some Cam- 

 bridge friends who were reading there, and thence 

 returned to Shrewsbury and to Maer for shooting ; 

 for at that time I should have thought myself mad to 

 give up the first days of partridge-shooting for geology 

 or any other science. 



Voyage of the ' Beagle' from December 27, 1831, to 

 October 2, 1836. 



On returning home from my short geological tour 

 in North Wales, I found a letter from Henslow, in- 

 forming me that Captain Fitz-Roy was willing to give 



* 'Philosophical Magazine,' 1842. 



