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Plymouth, England
Charles Darwin, aged 22, embarks on the HMS Beagle voyage as the ship captain's assistant. -
Cape Verde Islands
Darwin is exhilarated by his first observations. -
Crossing the equator
He has crossed the Equator, and I have undergone the disagreeable operation of being shaved. -
Salvador, Brazil
Darwin explores Brazilian rainforests for the first time. -
Punta Alta, Argentina
Darwin is intrigued by the giant fossils he sees. -
Tierra del Fuego, Argentina
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. -
Falkland Islands
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. -
Rio Negro, Argentina
Darwin explores the fertile lowland areas, known as Pampas, with the local people or 'gauchos'. -
Sydney, Australia
On arrival in Sydney Cove, Darwin's first feeling was 'to congratulate myself that I was born an Englishman... it is a fine town' -
Cocos Islands
Darwin studies coral reefs growing around islands to test his theory of atoll formation. -
Mauritius
'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. -
Cape Town, South Africa
'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.' -
Bahia and Pernambuco, South America
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. -
Falmouth, England
The Beagle ship was only 27m long and carried 74 people, and 22 clocks, in very close quarters.