THE LIFE OF CONRAD MARTENS 



} rigin of Species and the mountains of the moon : " But," he 

 ids, " I must apologize, for I suppose you don't laugh at non- 

 ;nse now as you used to do in the Beagle ; or, rather, I suppose 

 onsense does not come in your way. Well, that was a jolly 

 uise, and I hope you have been well and happy ever since." In 

 1 probability Captain Fitz Roy's abandonment of the Beagle's 

 >nsort, the Adventure, on account of her unseaworthiness, was 

 ic cause of Martens' leaving. The Adventure was sold ; the 

 ersonnel of both ships had to be accommodated on the larger 

 *ssel, and all supernumeraries would naturally be dispensed 

 ith. 



Martens stayed in Valparaiso until the 3rd of December, 1834, 

 hen he sailed in the Peruvian, an American schooner of ninety 

 ns burthen, for Tahiti. Here he remained for seven weeks 

 ^etching, and I think he long cherished a memory of that en- 

 lanted isle, for he often returned to these sketches for subject 

 latter. But the enchantment of the South Seas is not matter for 

 ic painter ; it can only be a subject for literature, and has best been 

 sualized by Herman Melville, by Robert Louis Stevenson, and 

 y Rupert Brooke. In one of his letters from Tahiti,* the English 

 oet who lies on Scyros, dead at the age of Keats, writes : " I've 

 >und the most ideal place in the world to live and work in a 

 ide verandah over a blue lagoon, a wooden pier with deep clear 

 ater for diving, and coloured fish that swim between your toes, 

 here also swim between your toes, more or less, scores of 

 ughing brown babies from two years to fourteen. Canoes and 

 aats, rivers, fishing with spear, net and line, the most wonderful 

 >od in the world strange fishes and vegetables perfectly cooked, 

 urope slides from me terrifyingly." You cannot put that into a 

 icture, because it is exotic colour and sensation. The word may 

 /oke a picture ; the painted picture will be but a theatrical set 

 :ene and this, I fear, must be the verdict on Martens' Tahiti 

 ater-colours. Martens left Tahiti on the 4th of March in the 

 lack Warrior, of Salem. She made the Bay of Islands, New 

 .ealand, in a month, stayed five days, and then continued her 

 oyage to Sydney, Martens making his first sketch of the Heads 

 * Marsh, Rupert Brooke: a Memoir, p- 107. 



