Darwin Slept Here - Eric N. Simons [33]
There are also things that it’s hard to convey in books, but that are an unanticipated bonus pleasure to experience in person, like tropical rainforests. Most of us have a decent understanding of the concept of green, but you can show up in your first Brazilian forest and be blown away, as Darwin was, by how that particular green just glows, in a way that’s almost challenging to the pastoral green of the English countryside or the subtle green of the drizzling Welsh mountains.
And then there are things that, no matter what you’ve read or talked about or heard, you can’t prepare yourself for. For Darwin, this meant one thing in particular, and it’s something that there’s not much to compare to in the modern era. Darwin, despite everything in his abolitionist English education, and despite a long family history of activism, was not prepared to deal with witnessing slavery. Doing so, at least according to some biographers, may have been one of the single most important events in his entire life, and not just in terms of his personality, but also in terms of his work.
The Beagle’s first stop in mainland South America was in Salvador da Bahia, on the northeastern coast of Brazil. For the first few days, Darwin delighted in the tropical scenery, hiking and collecting and scribbling gleefully in his journal about the glories of the rainforest. Then he hurt his knee and retired to his hammock. While Darwin rested, Captain FitzRoy went out to see the town, and when he came back, he told Darwin about having visited a great slave-owner. FitzRoy, according to Darwin, “defended and praised” slavery and told Darwin that he had asked many of the slaves he had seen if they wanted to be free, and all said no. They were happy as slaves, FitzRoy said. Darwin shot back that those answers weren’t worth much when asked in front of the master of the house, and FitzRoy threw a tantrum, saying that since Darwin did not believe his word they could no longer live together and that the naturalist would have to leave the voyage. The other officers, more accustomed to FitzRoy’s notorious hot temper, grabbed Darwin and invited him to eat with them, and soon enough, FitzRoy apologized and invited Darwin back.
That week, Darwin had his point made for him by proxy: There were Englishmen abroad in almost every large port, either living in town or on board other English ships in the harbor, and they generally came onboard to dine and converse with the gentlemen on board the Beagle, Darwin included. One of these men, the captain of a British warship called the Samarang, visited soon after the slavery argument. “Cap Paget has paid us numberless visits & is always very amusing,” Darwin wrote. “He has mentioned in the presence of those who would if they could have contradicted him, facts about slavery so revolting, that if I had read them in England, I should have placed them to the credulous zeal of well-meaning people: The extent to which the trade is carried on; the ferocity with which it is defended; the respectable (!) people who are concerned in it are far from being exaggerated at home.”
Paget told Darwin and FitzRoy of the atrocities and tortures he’d seen and quoted a slave he’d talked to as saying, as Darwin related it, “If I could but see my father & my two sisters once again, I should be happy. I never can forget them.”
“Such was the expression of one of these people, who are ranked by the polished savages in England as hardly their brethren, even in Gods eyes,” Darwin fumed that night in his diary. Turning his rage to FitzRoy, but hesitating to criticize him by name, he recorded an anonymous jab at the captain. “From instances I have seen of people so blindly & obstinately prejudiced, who in other points I would credit, on this one I shall never again scruple utterly to disbelieve: As far as my testimony goes, every individual who has the glory of having exerted himself on the subject of slavery, may rely on it his labours are exerted