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bluff, toward a sharp hairpin turn in the river. The point revealed little except another bend, the kind of view that convinced FitzRoy that nothing lay ahead but more hard work. On a satellite map, or even from the top of the nearby mountains, he would have seen a thin strip of blue winding through the hills until dead-ending in a massive lake just a few miles from where he stood. But deprived of those navigational tools, and frustrated with the slow pace, he sounded the retreat. On May 4, 1834, Darwin and the captain walked westward as far as they could, turned their backs to the mountains as the sun set, and floated down the river the next morning. They never knew how close they had come to the river’s source, and two days later, everyone was back aboard the Beagle.

Now I stood at about the same point, watched the s u nset, and thought about how rare it was to find a place preserved mostly the way Darwin saw it—a place that, perhaps because of its winds and lack of rain, had been bypassed by South America’s evolution. While Rio de Janeiro had been built up and Port Desire had rusted away, the Rio Santa Cruz pressed on, unvisited, desolate, its banks lined with bones. Humans have never really figured out how to permanently settle in this land, making it one of the few areas on earth that still changes on a geologic scale. “The plains of Patagonia are boundless, for they are scarcely passable, and hence unknown,” Darwin wrote. “They bear the stamp of having lasted, as they are now, for ages, and there appears no limit to their duration through future time.” I had reached the ultimate destination for a modern traveler: the stereotypical unspoiled, rugged, nineteenth-century version of the South American outdoors. The kind of place that, if there’s any romance at all in your adventuring soul, makes you sit up in your cubicle and take notice.

One, that is, that Darwin hadn’t remotely enjoyed.

The more I read and traveled, the more it became apparent that Darwin hadn’t necessarily derived pleasure from exploring unexplored wilderness—though the idea, like the idea of Patagonia, lent extra excitement to the places he did enjoy (like the relatively well-mapped Brazilian rainforest). The myth of Patagonia was all well and good while Darwin wasn’t actually there, but when he was, when he really dug into that myth and lit out for the great open spaces, he found it dull. Instead Darwin reveled in novelty—the distance from home and the gulf of difference between the stately Shrewsbury countryside and the exotic South Atlantic. The real thrills—and the real education—came in interacting with people and places he couldn’t find in England, which is why the businesslike trip up the River Santa Cruz, with its repetitive scenery, wasn’t as much fun. And for me, as for any modern traveler, capturing that spirit of novelty and discovery requires an understanding not only of the destination, but also of home.

PART II

REVOLUTION

THE CHANGING PEOPLE ON THE EAST COAST

5: ENGLAND

One Last Frozen Image

I am determined & feel sure, that the scenery of England is ten times more beautiful than any we have seen.

—DARWIN, IN A LETTER HOME, JULY 18, 1836

There we British sat, poor grey sodden creatures, huddling under our grey northern sky that seeped like a rancid dishcloth.

—DOUGLAS ADAMS, THE SALMON OF DOUBT

ON A TYPICAL WELSH SUMMER DAY I hunched against rain and wind, burrowed down into the sodden collar of my jacket and thought back to an admonition I’d heard earlier that morning, “there’s nothing like Wales when it’s wet.” Mist swirled, fog condensed, and beads of water dripped from my hair onto my nose. Two months after leaving South America, I was here to see where Darwin had come from and where he would return, never to leave again. A sharper contrast between the arid Patagonian plains and this leaking-sky climate would be hard to draw.

“Ah, drizzle,” explained my English friend Nathan, pulling up beside me on the rocky summit of Snowdon, Wales’ highest mountain. “It’s more English than scones,