In 1831, Charles Darwin (February 12, 1809 - April 19, 1882) was an amateur naturalist and an aspiring preacher when he was invited to accompany the HMS Beagle as the onboard naturalist. The trip lasted five years, and his notes were later published as The Voyage of the Beagle.

Darwin's extremely detailed observations set the basis for his theory of evolution by natural selection, published much later in The Origin of Species in 1859.

But do not read The Voyage of the Beagle expecting Darwin’s first words on natural selection or evolution.   From Dr. David Amigoni's introduction:   
"We should remember that Darwin put his theory together slowly and cautiously; he had only got so far as drafting a sketch of it by 1844. And it would be wrong to imply that the only reason for reading The Voyage of the Beagle is because of its status as a signpost towards the fully elaborated theory of evolution by natural selection. For Darwin's narrative is also a brilliant evocation of an awe-struck encounter with the natural world in all its variety...It is at once a daring, speculative reading of the world's geological structure, an illuminating contribution to early Victorian Anthropology, and a set of ground-breaking observations on the continuities and co-dependencies between human and animal-life..."

The Galapagos Islands. "The booby lays its eggs directly on the rocks." This is a blue-footed booby and, indeed, eggs - and chicks! - were right on the volcanic rock. Photograph by Ellen Vrana.

This well-developed journal shows a richly educated and immensely talented Englishman experiencing tropical lands unlike anything he had imagined and taking copious notes on everything ‘natural’ he observed.

Darwin's observations are rich, detailed and full of wonder at unrivalled sights. Like the plankton that turned the entire sea blood red:

In one day, we passed through two spaces of water thus stained, one of which alone must have extended over several square miles. What incalculable numbers of these microscopical animals! The colour of the water, as seen at some distance, was like that of a river which has flowed through a red clay district; but under the shade of the vessel's side, it was dark as chocolate... The animals move with narrow apex forwards, by the aid of their vibratory ciliae, and generally by rapid starts. They are exceedingly minute and quite invisible to the naked eye, only covering a space equal to a thousandth of a square inch.   I am particularly amazed and curious that Darwin calls attention to so many almost microscopic creatures throughout his travels. Travel writer and adventurer Sylvain Tesson believed taking a passionate interest in the small kept one interesting and interested throughout life. Japanese scholar Kakuzō Okakura observed that one who notices the small in others is likely to be someone who can also see great things within themselves. Noticing the small and letting it become large is a gifted human ability.

March 18, off the Cape Verde Islands

Or rabbit-like rodents in Argentina that keep Darwin and his gaucho escort company on the dry, wide flats of the pampas.

The bizcacha has one very singular habit; namely, dragging every hard object to the mouth of its burrow: around each group of holes many bones of cattle, stones, thistle-stalks, hard lumps of earth, dry dung, etc., are collected into an irregular heap, which frequently amounts to as much as a wheelbarrow would contain. I was credibly informed that a gentleman, when riding on a dark night, dropped his watch; he returned in the morning, and by searching in the neighbourhood of every bizcacha hole on the line in the road, and as expected, he soon found it.

September 28, 1831, in Argentina

The Galapagos Islands. "As I was walking along, I met two large tortoises, each of which must have weighed at least 200 pounds." Photograph by Ellen Vrana.

Darwin's observations on Brazilian cervids:

The most curious fact with respect to this animal, is the overpoweringly strong and offensive odour which proceeds from the buck. It is quite indescribable...I believe the smell is most powerful at the period when its horns are perfect, or free from hairy skin. When in this state the meat is, of course, quite uneatable, but the gauchos assert, that if buried for some time in the fresh earth, the taint is removed.

July 5, Brazil

There is something almost childlike in Darwin's wonder and astonishment at the life he sees; he is overwhelmed with life's details and delight.

The Galapagos Islands. Photograph by Ellen Vrana.

According to Paul Nurse, a Nobel Prize-winning geneticist who captured life's basic yet essential components, Darwin, by collecting and reviewing massive amounts of data, "joined up all the dots and showed how the world how evolution could work."   "Evolution loves death more than it loves you or me." observed Annie Dillard in A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, her sojourn in the wilderness. If you understand little about evolution, understand that.

This dot connecting relied on the naturalist's close observation of living creatures, bones, fossils, and geological oddities, laying the foundation for a theory that relied on slow, hereditary change over time.

I have seen, in the Cordillera of the Andes, the evident marks where stupendous mountains have been broken into pieces like so much thin crust, and the strata thrown on their vertical edges; but never did any scene, like these 'streams of stones,' so forcibly convey to my mind the idea of a convulsion, of which in historical records we might in vain seek any counterpart, yet the progress of knowledge will probably someday give a simple explanation of this phenomenon.

May 19, near Santa Cruz, Argentina

The Galapagos Islands. "On the hills, an ugly yellowish-brown species [of lizard] was common. We saw many of these latter kind, some clumsily running out of our way, often shuffling into their burrows." Photograph by Ellen Vrana.

Today, we rather lazily associate The Voyage of the Beagle with Darwin's exploration of the Galapagos Islands, "The natural history of these islands is eminently curious and well deserves attention," notes Darwin of this extraordinary archipelago. I travelled to the Galapagos a decade ago and saw the same animals Darwin saw, a testament to Ecuador's strict conservation efforts.

The Galapagos was a small part of the voyage, however. Darwin and the HMS Beagle also travelled the coast of South America and several South Pacific islands.

Years after the Beagle returned to England with all her sailors and jarred specimens, Darwin claims his most vivid memories remained the "sublimity of the primaeval forests undefaced by the hand of man; whether those of Brazil, where the powers of Life are predominant or those of Tierra del Fuego, where Death and Decay prevail."   That unseen nature, that undiscovered place. Does it still exist? American poet and environmentalist Wendell Berry wrote a beautiful poem about an animal that we never see and it feels appropriate to include a few lines here:  
    
"To the Unseeable Animal"   
Being, whose flesh dissolves at our glance,knower of the secret sums and measures,you are always here,dwelling in the oldest sycamores,visiting the faithful springs when they are dark and the foxes have crept to their edges...

The Galapagos Islands. "The rocks on the coast abounded with great black lizards, between three and four feet long." Photograph by Ellen Vrana.

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth", wrote biologist Rachel Carson in her gorgeous study of nature observation, "find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts." Upon returning to England, Darwin continued his observations and began the groundwork of the most important scientific books of all time.   In Robert MacFarlane's part elegy/part discovery of the wild spaces of Britain he laments the loss of deeply historic and natural life (forests, rocks, beaches, moors etc.) that had yet been touched by humans. Perhaps had it been otherwise, would Darwin have sought distant shores?

Marian Collier's sketch of Charles Darwin, 1878. Learn more. © National Portrait Gallery, London.

Darwin closes his monumental account of the exploratory voyage with a line that perfectly reflects the then-contemporary wisdom of American Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and poet Walt Whitman:

"No one can stand in these solitudes unmoved and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body."

Elevate the all too human breath to something majestical with Wendell Berry's passioned plea for the wholeness of nature, Amanda Gorman's hopeful vision for America, and a historic hymn to a tree older than you or me or Darwin or even the oak that made his ships.