Ch. VI.] 1831—1836. 125 



already lived through five years' work, in the most stormy 

 regions in the world, under Commanders Stokes and Fitz-Roy 

 without a sorious accident. When re-commissioned in 1831 

 for her second voyage, she was found (as I learned from tho 

 late Admiral Sir James Sulivan) to be so rotten that she had 

 practically to be rebuilt, and it was this that caused the 

 long delay in refitting. 



She was fitted out for the expedition with all possible care : 

 to quote my father's description, written from Devonport, 

 November 17, 1831 : " Evorybody, who can judge, says it is 

 one of the grandest voyages that has almost ever been sent out. 

 Everything is on a grand scale. ... In short, everything is as 

 prosperous as human means can make it." The twenty-four 

 chronometers and the mahogany fittings seom to have been 

 especially admired, and are more than once alluded to. 



Owing to the smallness of tho vessel, every one on board was 

 cramped for room, and my father's accommodation seems to have 

 been narrow enough. 



Yet of this confined space he wrote enthusiastically, 

 September 17, 1831 : — " When I wrote last, I was in great 

 alarm about my cabin. The cabins were not then marked 

 out, but when I left they were, and mine is a capital one, 

 certainly next best to the Captain's and remarkably light. 

 My companion most luckily, I think, will turn out to be the 

 officer whom I shall like best. Captain Fitz-Roy says he will 

 take care that one corner is so fitted up that I shall be com- 

 fortable in it and shall consider it my home, but that also I 

 shall have the run of his. My cabin is the drawing one ; and 

 in the middle is a large table, on which we two sleep in 

 hammocks. But for tho first two months there will be no 

 drawing to be done, so that it will be quite a luxurious room, 

 and a good deal larger than the Captain's cabin." 



My father used to say that it was the absolute necessity of 

 tidiness in the cramped space on the Beagle that helped " to 

 give him his methodical habits of working." On the Beagle, 

 too, he would say, that he learned what he considered the 

 golden rule for saving time ; i.e., taking care of the minutes. 



In a letter to his sister (July 1832), he writes contentedly of 

 his manner of life at sea : — " I do not think I have ever given 

 you an account of how the day passes. We breakfast at eight 

 o'clock. The invariable maxim is to throw away all politeness 

 — that is, never to wait for each other, and bolt off the minute 

 one has done eating, &c. At sea, when the weather is calm, 

 I work at marine animals, with which the whole ocean abounds. 

 If there is any sea up I am either sick or contrive to read. 



