Fossils, Finches and Fuegians: Charles Darwin’s Adventures and Discoveries on the Beagle

With reference to the expressions which have offended the Buenos Airean Government, I beg to inform you, and I request that you will make it known, if necessary, that I did not say, that ‘I should go to some other country where the government was more civilized’, but that my expression to the health officer was, ‘Say to your government that I shall return to a more civilized country where boats are sent more frequently than balls.’ In hailing the guard vessel I did not in any way allude to the government and my words to her commander were ‘If you dare to fire another shot at a British man-of-war you may expect to have your hulk sunk, and if you fire at this vessel, I will return a broadside for every shot!’.67

In the meantime, further trouble of a different kind had arisen in Monte Video. On 5 August, Charles wrote in his journal:

This has been an eventful day in the history of the Beagle. At 10 oclock in the morning the Minister for the present military government came on board & begged for assistance against a serious insurrection of some black troops. Cap FitzRoy immediately went ashore to ascertain whether it was a party affair, or that the inhabitants were really in danger of having their houses ransacked. The head of the Police (Damas) has continued to power through both governments, & is considered as entirely neutral; being applied to, he gave it as his opinion that it would be doing a service to the state to land our force. Whilst this was going on ashore, the Americans landed their boats & occupied the Custom House. Immediately the Captain arrived at the mole, he made us the signal to hoist out & man our boats. In a very few minutes, the Yawl, Cutter, Whaleboat & Gig were ready with 52 men heavily armed with Muskets, Cutlasses & Pistols. After waiting some time on the pier Signor Dumas arrived & we marched to a central fort, the seat of government. During this time the insurgents had planted artillery to command some of the streets, but otherwise remained quiet. They had previously broken open the Prison & armed the prisoners. The chief cause of apprehension was owing to their being in possession of the citadel which contains all the ammunition. It is suspected that all this disturbance is owing to the mæneuvring of the former constitutional government. But the politicks of the place are quite unintelligible: it has always been said that the interests of the soldiers & the present government are identical, & now it would seem to be the reverse. Capt. FitzRoy would have nothing to do with all this: he would only remain to see that private property was not attacked. If the National band were not rank cowards, they might at once seize the citadel & finish the business; instead of this, they prefer protecting themselves in the fortress of St. Lucia. Whilst the different parties were trying to negociate matters, we remained at our station & amused ourselves by cooking beefsteaks in the Courtyard. At sun-set the boats were sent on board & one returned with warm clothing for the men to bivouac during the night. As I had a bad headache, I also came & remained on board. The few left in the Ship under the command of Mr Chaffers [the Master] have been the most busily engaged of the whole crew. They have triced up the Boarding netting, loaded & pointed the guns, & cleared for action. We are now at night in a high state of preparation so as to make the best defence possible, if the Beagle should be attacked. To obtain ammunition could be the only possible motive. 6th. The boats have returned. Affairs in the city now more decidedly show a party spirit, & as the black troops are enclosed in the citadel by double the number of armed citizens, Capt FitzRoy deemed it advisable to withdraw his force. It is probable in a very short time the two adverse sides will come to an encounter under such circumstances. Capt FitzRoy being in possession of the central fort would have found it very difficult to have preserved his character of neutrality. There certainly is a great deal of pleasure in the excitement of this sort of work – quite sufficient to explain the reckless gayety with which sailors undertake even the most hazardous attacks. Yet as time flies, it is evil to waste so much in empty parade.

FitzRoy’s withdrawal was followed by a fair amount of skirmishing and continued disorder. The military governor, Juan Antonio Lavalleja, was the man who had first established the independence of Uruguay in 1828. When he entered the town of Monte Video, he was said by Charles to have been well received by everybody except for his own black troops. He threatened to expel them from the citadel, and planted some guns to command the gate. During the night the blacks then made a sally, volleys of musketry were heard in the city, and it seemed on the Beagle that there might have been heavy fighting. But in fact not a single person was wounded, because according to Charles both parties were determined not to come within musket range either of one another or of the black troops. The next day, support for Lavalleja quickly evaporated, and he made a strategic retreat from the scene, leaving the field to his rival the former president, Don Fructuoso Rivera. Fierce party quarrels continued to take place in the town, and until 12 August the shops were all shut and the inhabitants were obliged to keep within their houses. Don Fructuoso then reappeared, and restoration of the constitutional government was proclaimed. Two days later the President made his formal re-entry into the town, and his government was considered to be in office once again. It was reported to Charles, perhaps by the merchant Mr Parry with whom he had earlier dined, that the spectacle was a magnificent one, with 1800 wild gaucho (Argentinian cowboy) cavalry in support, many of whom were curiously-dressed Indians with splendid horses.

FitzRoy was pleased to be told by the principal persons whose lives and property were threatened that the presence of the Beagle’s crewmen had certainly prevented bloodshed. Charles concluded that ‘One is shocked at the bloody revolutions in Europe, but after seeing to what an extent such imbecile changes can proceed, it is hard to determine which of the two is most to be dreaded.’ Considering that like patriots in neighbouring countries, Lavalleja and his predecessors had had a severe struggle against the Spanish overlords, followed by fights against both Portuguese and Brazilian forces trying to take advantage of the weakness of the small Republica Oriental del Uruguay, Charles was perhaps being rather severe. And Uruguay remained for some years to come in a state of intermittent civil war between Lavalleja’s supporters, named the Blancos because they carried white flags, and the Colorados once led by Don Fructuoso, with red ones.

In his general notes on what wildlife he had seen in Monte Video, Charles recorded that:

Birds are abundant on the plains & are brilliantly coloured. Starlings, thrushes, shrikes, larks & partridges are the commonest. Snipes here frequently rise & fly up in great circles; in their flight, as they descend, they make that peculiar buzzing noise, which few which breed in England are known to do. On the sand-banks on the coast are large flocks of Rhynchops [scissor-beaks]; these birds are generally supposed to be the inhabitants of the Tropics. Every evening they fly out in flocks to the sea & return to the beach in the morning. I have seen them at night, especially at Bahia Blanca, flying round a boat in a wild rapid irregular manner, something in same manner as Caprimulgus [nightjar] does. I cannot imagine what animals they catch with their singular bills.

When next he encountered Rhyncops he had more to say about the function of their beaks.

During the last few days before departing on the Beagle’s first cruise, Charles’s most notable achievement was, after a long chase among the rocks at the Mount, to shoot through the head a large female capybara, in structure a huge guinea-pig, in habits a water rat. She weighed ninety-eight pounds, and could not readily be preserved apart from a tick crawling on her skin. He also found two more new species of turbellarian worm under dry stones on the Mount, collected some elegant snakes and frogs, and as usual captured a host of spiders and beetles.

CHAPTER 8

Digging up Fossils in the Cliffs at Bahia Blanca

The Beagle was now ready to proceed on her first cruise to the south, surveying the coastal waters between Buenos Aires and Bahia Blanca. At first the steep waves in the shallow water at the mouth of the Rio Plata caused so much spray to break over the ship that Charles had seldom felt a more disagreeable sensation in his stomach. In more open water after rounding Point Piedras, matters improved, and on 24 August in ten fathoms of water slightly north of Cape Corrientes in latitude 37o26´S, Charles found ‘incredible numbers’ of the very simple animal that he had encountered earlier in the voyage, north of St Jago (see p.54) and off the Abrolhos Islands, and had been unable to identify. This time he was able to describe in some detail the anatomy of these arrow worms or chaetognaths as they came to be called, and twelve years later published a short paper about them.68

Two days later, in latitude 38o20´S, Charles found some of what he called corallines, the insignificant but exceedingly numerous little organisms of doubtful nature that encrusted rocks and fronds of seaweed like a moss growing on the surface, to which he had been introduced by Robert Grant at Edinburgh (see p.6). On examination of the specimens under his microscope, he immediately and correctly identified them as closely related to what would today be called ‘bryozoans’ of genus Flustra

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