It is to Lyell's disciple, Charles Darwin, however, that we turn for our main illustration of the value of travel for comprehensive scientific generalization. Born, like another great liberator, on February 12, 1809, Darwin was only twenty-two years old when he received appointment as naturalist on H.M.S. Beagle, about to sail from Devonport on a voyage around the world. The main purpose of the expedition, under command of the youthful Captain Fitzroy, three or four years older than Darwin, was to make a survey of certain coasts in South America and the Pacific Islands, and to carry a line of chronometrical measurements about the globe. Looking back in 1876 on this memorable expedition, the naturalist wrote, "The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life, and has determined my whole career." In spite of the years he had spent at school and college he regarded this experience as the first real training or education of his mind.
Darwin had studied medicine at Edinburgh, but found surgery distasteful. He moved to Cambridge, with the idea of becoming a clergyman of the Established Church. As a boy he had attended with his mother, daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, the Unitarian services. At Cambridge he graduated without distinction at the beginning of 1831. It should be said, however, that the traditional studies were particularly ill suited to his cast of mind, that he had not been idle, and had developed particular diligence in different branches of science, and above all as a collector.
He was six feet tall, fond of shooting and hunting, and able to ride seventy-five or eighty miles without tiring. He had shown himself at college fond of company, and a little extravagant. He was, though a sportsman, extremely humane; had a horror of inflicting pain, and such repugnance at the thought of slavery that he quarreled violently with Captain Fitzroy when the latter condoned the abomination. Darwin was not, however, of a turbulent disposition. Sir James Sulivan, who had accompanied the expedition as second lieutenant, said many years after: "I can confidently express my belief that during the five years in the Beagle, he was never known to be out of temper, or to say one unkind or hasty word _of_ or _to_ any one."
