Charles Darwin

Date

1809–1882

Description

City of birth: Shrewsbury
Country of birth: United Kingdom
Field of activity: Ecology — naturalist

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Quotes

‘On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil. I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate. I suspected that these moans were from a tortured slave, for I was told that this was the case in another instance. Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I have staid in a house where a young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal. I have seen a little boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I could interfere) on his naked head, for having handed me a glass of water not quite clean; I saw his father tremble at a mere glance from his master's eye. … And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his will be done on earth! It makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty: but it is a consolation to reflect, that we at least have made a greater sacrifice, than ever made by any nation, to expiate our sin.’

Author

Charles Darwin

Speaker

Charles Darwin

Title of the publication

The Voyage of the Beagle

Other contributors

n/a

Publisher (or journal name with vol. and number)

John Murray

City of publication

London

Country of publication (modern nation-state equivalent)

United Kingdom

Publication date

1845

Location [pp. or web]

Ch. XXI, pp. 499–50

Other location

http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=512&itemID=F14&viewtype=image ; http://www.esp.org/books/darwin/beagle/

Original language

English

Genre

Book

Context

The Voyage of the Beagle is the title most often given to the book written by Charles Darwin and published in 1839 as his Journal and Remarks. The revised second edition published in 1845 used this title.

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