104 HAECKEL 



board as hostages, and in the end took them with 

 him to England. They were to be instructed 

 in morahty and Christianity and then taken back 

 to their people, in order to introduce these elements 

 of civilisation, for the advantage of shipwrecked 

 sailors or distressed travellers who might fall in 

 with them. We feel a breath of the spirit of 

 Rousseau in it. As a fact nothing came of the 

 device. The good Fuegians were clothed and 

 improved by civilised folk for a year or two, 

 returned home, immediately abandoned their 

 trousers and their Christianity, and remained 

 naked savages. But the bringing home of these 

 hostages led, in the early thirties, to a new 

 expedition of FitzRoy to Tierra del Fuego. The 

 Government directed him to draw up further 

 charts, and he looked about for a man of science 

 to accompany him. 



The man proved to be Charles Darwin, then 

 in his twenty-second year. 



The son of a prosperous provincial physician, 

 he had begun to study medicine without much 

 success, and was transferred to theology, only 

 to find after three years of study that he was 

 as little fitted to become a country clergyman 

 as a country doctor. He had an unconquerable 

 love of scientific investigation. He collected all 

 kinds of things, and desired to travel, without 

 any very clear idea of his destiny. A chance 

 introduction came to the young man as a god- 

 send, and he joined FitzRoy's expedition to 

 South America. Once more, it was this journey 



