The Voyage of the ''Beagle." 



CHAPTER I. 



ST. JAGO — CAPE DE VERD ISLANDS. 



Porto Praya — Rlbeira Grande — Atmospheric Dust with Itifusoiia 

 — Habits of a Sea-slug- and Cuttle-fish — St. Paul's Rocks, 

 Non-volcanic — Singular Incrustations — Insects the First 

 Colonists of Islands — Fernando Noronha — Bahia — Burnished 

 Rocks — Habits of a Diodon — Pelag'ic Confervae and Infusoria 

 — Causes of Discoloured Sea. 



After having been twice driven back by heavy south- 

 western gales, Her Majesty's ship Beagle, a ten-gun brig, 

 under the command of Captain Fitz Roy, R.N., sailed 

 from Devonport on the 27th of December, 1831. The 

 object of the expedition was to complete the survey of 

 Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, commenced under 

 Captain King in 1826 to 1830 — to survey the shores of 

 Chile, Peru, and of some islands in the Pacific — and to 

 carry a chain of chronometrical measurements round 

 the world. On the 6th of January we reached Teneriffe, 

 but were prevented landing, by fears of our bringing the 

 cholera : the next morning we saw the sun rise behind 

 the rugged outline of the Grand Canary Island, and 

 suddenly illumine the Peak of Teneriffe, whilst the lower 

 parts were veiled in fleecy clouds. This was the first of 

 many delightful days never to be forgotten. On the 

 i6th of January, 1832, we anchored at Porto Pniya, in 

 St. Jago, the chief island of the Cape de Verd archipelago. 

 The neighbourhood of Porto Praya, viewed from the 

 sea, wears a desolate aspect. The volcanic fires of a 

 past age, and the scorching heat of a tropical sun, have 

 in most places rendered the soil unfit for vegetation. 

 The country rises in successive steps of table-land, inter- 

 spersed with some truncate conical hills, and the horizon 

 is bounded by an irregular chain of more lofty mountains. 

 The scene, as beheld through the hazy atmosphere of this 

 climate, is one of great interest ; if, indeed, a person, fresh 

 from sea, and who has just walked, for the first time, in 

 a grove of cocoa-nut trees, can be a judge of anything but 



