Darwin, Charles (1809-1882). The naturalist on board the Beagle. His voyage on land will turn the page of his mind; his Journal of Researches the page of his life.
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SCENE ONE: An evening concert – theatre scenery – a famous tree, revered as a God – a night under the open sky – an immense troop of mares swimming.
The landscape, a brilliant tint like that of great theatres, lit only by fireflies. Crickets, in a shrill pitch, ceaselessly cry; small frogs pleasingly chirp, to the sound of rain dripping on leaves, countless leaves. A humble concert.
A tree, without any neighbour, has offerings made to it, tied to its branches by threads: cigars, bread; has horses sacrificed to it, their bones, bleached by the sun, scattered round its trunk.
An open-air camp: pasture, a muddy puddle, meat and firewood. The high life of horseback travel, where one might reflect on marked pictures of the day: the canoe delayed by hundreds of heads, all directed one way; their pointed ears and distended nostrils just above the water. Mares swimming, on the order of soldiers.
SCENE TWO: The ostrich – wild dogs and common cats – peach and orange-trees – attacks on and of Indians – slaughter.
A deep-toned hissing the note of the ostrich running against the wind, wings expanded , a vessel making sail. A speciman of the second type, smaller than the Common, its plumage a different colour, called after Darwin: Rhea darwinii.
Wild dogs heard to howl on wooded banks; the common cat, now a large and fierce animal, is known to inhabit rocky hills.
Springing from seeds, peach and orange-trees – the olive too, clothe islands with their fruit and fresh green leaves.
Indians roams about the plains, without a home or fixed occupation. A war of extermination.
The beef-eating population champion the unfair struggle: the bullock dragged to the spot, its hamstrings cut, gives the death bellow: Agony! Agony!
All countries, Darwin tells us, have darker interior pictures.
SCENE THREE: Bands of butterflies – little aeronaut – a most beautiful spectacle – Port Desire.
One evening at sea butterflies came, extended as far as the eye could range. A seaman cried, 'It was snowing butterflies.'
Then one day a little aeronaut arrived, letting itself on board repeatedly fall and reascend the same thread; its stock of web inexhaustible.
One very dark night, the sea glowed with a pale light, every crest of every wave bright, and sky reflected.
At Port Desire, on the coast of Patagonia, the naturalist steps ashore, bearing himself, one imagines, with dignity; those that later came had more notorious fame: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid.
From
journal, December 2021.
Picture credit: HMS Beagle by the ship's artist Conrad Martens, (source: Wikipedia).
See Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin.
