24 Life ami Letters of Francis Gallon 



ability, which somehow failed of full fruition. Francis Galtou's sister 



writes in her Reminiscences of the year 1826 : 



"We then went on to my uncle Sir Francis Dai-win at Sydiiope, who sent a pair 

 of horses to lielp ours up the steep hill to the house. It was a wild place, but very 

 amusing to visit. The six children slept in hammocks and kept pet snakes." 



The love of adventure, the scientific and literary tastes of 8ir 

 Francis S. Darwin lead me to associate him closely with his godson, and 

 it is strange that of all his Darwin or Galton uncles, Francis Galton 

 in personal appearance seems to me to resemble most closely Francis 

 Darwin. This leads me to emphasise a point which 1 think is of some 

 importance : the Darwins were not by nature born travellers. Charles 

 Darwin it is true went on the memorable " Beagle " voyage, but prob- 

 ably not because he derived immediate pleasure from travel for its 

 own sake. 



" I trust and believe," he wrote, " that the time spent in this voyage, if thrown 

 away for all other respects, will produce its full worth in Natural History ; and it 

 appears to me the doing what little we can to increase the general stock of knowledge is 

 as respectable an object in life as one can in any likelihood pursue." {I'ifo, i, p. 205.) 



Those are not the words of a traveller for the joy of travel, but of one 

 who travels to obtain an end, not from innate Wanderlust. Some of 

 my readers may know that joy in passing on into the unfamiliar, in 

 spending each day under new conditions, — an unknown mortal mid 

 unknowns ! The Wanderlust is a fever which seizes the non-immune, 

 mostly in youth, but may be in the blood, unquenched even in age. 

 Both Francis Galton and Francis Darwin had marked touches of it, 

 and in two ancestral lines — other than the direct Darwin line — we 

 reach men who wandered and fought, and in an eai'lier century we 

 have little doubt our Francises would have joined another Francis 

 and have reached fame as Elizabethan buccaneers. This love of travel 

 sprung, not from Darwin, but from Colyear and Barclay ancestry; it is 

 manifest even in the scientific work of Galton. Both Charles Darwin 

 and Francis Galton were pioneers in science, but the nature of their 

 work was essentially diffei'ent. Darwin invaded a new continent with 

 the idea of settling in it. He planned great roads through it and he 

 largely built them, and oi-ganized the country. He left traces of his 

 pioneer work on the face of the land which must remain as his 

 memorial for all time. Galton also discovered a new world, but he 

 rushed from point to point of it making his hasty maps and ever eager 



