This was not Darwin’s first experience of illness. He had had what was described as a “weak stomach” as a student in Edinburgh, and symptoms of sore lips (atopic dermatitis) appeared during his Cambridge days. At times he was abnormally “knocked up”, and he had palpitations and chest pain before sailing on the Beagle. During the voyage, while in South America, he had headaches and episodes of weakness and faintness. However, in the periods when he was not ill, he was extremely fit and could outlast other members of the Beagle crew.
Darwin’s documentation of his time in New Zealand and Australia demonstrates his superb ability to observe and record, and gives us an insight into his then current ideas. His illness is frequently mentioned.
New Zealand
Darwin was not attracted to New Zealand. He wrote:
30th [December 1835] I believe we were all glad to leave New Zealand; it is not a pleasant place; amongst the natives there is absent that charming simplicity which is found at Tahiti; & of the English the greater part are the very refuse of Society. Neither is the country itself attractive. — I look back but to one bright spot & that is Waimate with its Christian inhabitants. [Waimate is documented as being NZ’s first European-style farm.]
Despite this negative impression of New Zealand, Darwin remained interested in the country. At the time of his visit, an epidemic of influenza among the Maori gave him cause to consider the then scientific mystery of contagion. Epidemics aside, Maori were decreasing in number and Darwin was concerned that this was contrary to the Malthus doctrine that populations should increase in times of plenty. In December 1843, Darwin wrote to Ernst Dieffenbach (a German physician and naturalist working in New Zealand who later translated Darwin’s account of the voyages of HMS Adventure and HMS Beagle into German, Naturwissenschaftlichen Reisen):
I have lately been much interested in reading your chapters on the slow decrease in numbers . . . of these poor people. The case appears to me very curious, especially as the decrease has commenced or continued since the introduction of the potato — the relation between the amount of population & of food is hence inverted. It would have been a case for the great Malthus to have reflected on.
Darwin also observed the decline (at that time) of Australian Aboriginals, and commented:
The varieties of man seem to act on each other in the same way as different species of animals — the stronger always extirpating the weaker.
Australia
Darwin’s impressions of Sydney (Port Jackson) were more positive, if a little parochial, than his impressions of New Zealand:
12th [January 1836] At last we anchored within Sydney Cove; we found the little basin, containing many large ships & surrounded by Warehouses []. In the evening I walked through the town & returned full of admiration at the whole scene. — It is a most magnificent testimony to the power of the British nation: here, in a less promising country, scores of years have effected many times more than centuries in South America. — My first feeling was to congratulate myself that I was born an Englishman.
He also admired, albeit with considerable condescension, Australia’s Indigenous population and compared them favourably to the Fuegians (the indigenous inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego).
