The Voyage of the Beagle — Charles Darwin

"I hate every wave of the ocean," the seasick Charles Darwin wrote to his family during his five-year voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle. It was this world-wide journey, however, that launched the scientist?s career.The Voyage of the Beagle is Darwin's fascinating account of his trip - of his biological and geological observations and collection activities, of his speculations about the causes and theories behind scientific phenomena, of his interactions with various native peoples, of his beautiful descriptions of the lands he visited, and of his amazing discoveries in the Galapagos archipelago. Although scientific in nature, the literary quality rivals those of John Muir and Henry Thoreau. About the Author: Charles Darwin is the author of one of the most controversial and influential works in Western thought, The Origin of the Species (1859). At age twenty-two, Darwin, who had dropped out of medical school in Edinburgh, became the gentleman companion (and only secondarily, naturalist) to the moody, irascible Captain Robert FitzRoy. Although his father had wanted him to become a pastor, Darwin?s journey on the H.M.S. Beagle led to him instead becoming the forerunner of evolutionary theory.