THE LIFE OF CONRAD MARTENS 



we shall probably never know. Official reports do not substantiate 

 the rumour that " being offered by Captain Blackwood, of H.M.S. 

 Hyacinth, the opportunity of a cruise, he sailed in that vessel to 

 Rio," for Captain Blackwood was not appointed to the Hyacinth 

 until a year later. However he came there, Martens was in 

 Monte Video in August, 1 832 ; the Beagle arrived the same 

 month, and he joined it as topographer. He took the place of 

 Augustus Earle, whose continual ill-health probably a recur- 

 rence of fever caught in India had prevented him from being of 

 much practical use to the expedition. 



The voyage of the Beagle would have been long ago forgotten 

 by all except learned geographers but for the presence on board 

 of that great naturalist Charles Darwin, attached, without pay, to 

 Captain Fitz Roy's survey of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. 

 Darwin wrote in his Journal :* " The voyage of the Beagle has 

 been by far the most important event in my life, and has deter- 

 mined my whole career." Martens might have said the same. 



Martens remained on board the Beagle for two years, and many 

 sketch-books, now in the possession of Miss Macarthur Onslow, 

 and numerous sketches in the Mitchell and Dixson collections, 

 attest the good use he made of his time. Apart from his work 

 as topographer, he sketched everything that struck him as typical 

 and peculiar, and was never tired of disentangling, with the point 

 of his pencil, the luxurious undergrowth of the tropical forest. 

 It is true that his sketches of Chileans and Patagonians, and other 

 specimens of Adam's small fry, find out his weakness in figure 

 drawing though he preserves sufficient of native character for a 

 scientific record ; but this constant habit of sketching quickened 

 his eye and hand, and we can see how much he has improved 

 upon his English work. 



On the 23rd of July, 1 834, the Beagle arrived at Valparaiso, and 

 Martens left her. The suggestion that a quarrel with Darwin 

 was the cause of his leaving seems altogether unfounded, for the 

 tone of a letter he wrote to the great man twenty-eight years later 

 is cordial and pleasant, and suggests no previous discord. For 

 Martens, the letter is a gay one. He jokes discreetly about The 

 * Darwin, Journal during the Voyage of H.M.S. "Beagle." 



