Charles Darwin’s expedition through Chile
On 10 June 1834, HMS Beagle emerged from the Strait of Magellan into the open Pacific Ocean. It was a moment of huge relief in particular for one long-suffering voyager, after facing dangers “enough to make a landsman dream for a week about death, peril, and shipwreck” – the expedition’s 25-year-old year-old naturalist, Charles Darwin. And it was also the start of a leg of the groundbreaking expedition that would prove pivotal in the evolution of his ideas on natural selection. At this stage, Darwin was more geologist than naturalist and, though his notes on the species of the Galápagos Islands are often cited as the crucial evidence, his observations on Chile’s geology also helped lay the foundations of his revolutionary theories.
Two weeks after rounding the tip of South America, the Beagle anchored off San Carlos (later renamed Ancud) on the northern tip of the Chilean island of Chiloé, long a staging post for ships rounding Cape Horn. For Darwin it was the start of his year-long travels through Chile.
Darwin suffered terribly from seasickness, as he had discovered all too soon after the set out from’s commander, Robert FitzRoy, continued surveying the coastline. Shortly after landing, the young naturalist was pushing through the tangled bamboo, tall ferns and sinuous creepers of Chiloé’s densely forested interior, writing descriptions of the habitat – accounts today being used by ecologists to restore an area of the island to its endemic state following widespread deforestation.
