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Charles Darwin, aged 22, embarks on the HMS Beagle voyage as the ship captain's assistant.
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Darwin is exhilarated by his first observations.
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He has crossed the Equator, and I have undergone the disagreeable operation of being shaved.
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Darwin explores Brazilian rainforests for the first time.
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Darwin is intrigued by the giant fossils he sees.
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Captain Robert FitzRoy repatriates three native people he had brought to England on a previous voyage. FitzRoy attempts to start a Christian mission, which fails disastrously.
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Darwin finds the barren, windswept Falkland Islands 'desolate and wretched.' But he perks up when he cracks open some 'primitive looking rocks' and finds fossils.
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Darwin explores the fertile lowland areas, known as Pampas, with the local people or 'gauchos'.
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On arrival in Sydney Cove, Darwin's first feeling was 'to congratulate myself that I was born an Englishman... it is a fine town'
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Darwin studies coral reefs growing around islands to test his theory of atoll formation.
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'I took a quiet walk along the sea coast to the north of the town; the plain is there quite uncultivated, consisting of a filed of black lava smoothes over with coarse grass and bushes, the greater part of which are mimosas,' observes Darwin.
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'The first object in Cape Town which strikes the eye of a stranger is the number of bullock wagons... I have as yet not mentioned the well known Table Mountains; this great mass of horizontally stratified sandstone rises quite close behind the town to a height of 3,500 feet.'
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In the jungles of South America, Darwin discovers many incredible creatures. However, both homesick and seasick, he is dismayed when the Beagle makes an unscheduled detour to make additional longitude measurements.
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The Beagle ship was only 27m long and carried 74 people, and 22 clocks, in very close quarters.